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Our (Mother’s) Mitochondria and Our Mind

Most of the energy we get to spend is furnished by mitochondria, minuscule living structures sitting inside our cells or dispatched back and forth within them to where they are needed. Mitochondria produce energy by burning down what remains of our meal after we have digested it, but at the cost of...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Kramer, Peter, Bressan, Paola
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5761714/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28937858
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1745691617718356
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author Kramer, Peter
Bressan, Paola
author_facet Kramer, Peter
Bressan, Paola
author_sort Kramer, Peter
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description Most of the energy we get to spend is furnished by mitochondria, minuscule living structures sitting inside our cells or dispatched back and forth within them to where they are needed. Mitochondria produce energy by burning down what remains of our meal after we have digested it, but at the cost of constantly corroding themselves and us. Here we review how our mitochondria evolved from invading bacteria and have retained a small amount of independence from us; how we inherit them only from our mother; and how they are heavily implicated in learning, memory, cognition, and virtually every mental or neurological affliction. We discuss why counteracting mitochondrial corrosion with antioxidant supplements is often unwise, and why our mitochondria, and therefore we ourselves, benefit instead from exercise, meditation, sleep, sunshine, and particular eating habits. Finally, we describe how malfunctioning mitochondria force rats to become socially subordinate to others, how such disparity can be evened off by a vitamin, and why these findings are relevant to us.
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spelling pubmed-57617142018-02-01 Our (Mother’s) Mitochondria and Our Mind Kramer, Peter Bressan, Paola Perspect Psychol Sci Article Most of the energy we get to spend is furnished by mitochondria, minuscule living structures sitting inside our cells or dispatched back and forth within them to where they are needed. Mitochondria produce energy by burning down what remains of our meal after we have digested it, but at the cost of constantly corroding themselves and us. Here we review how our mitochondria evolved from invading bacteria and have retained a small amount of independence from us; how we inherit them only from our mother; and how they are heavily implicated in learning, memory, cognition, and virtually every mental or neurological affliction. We discuss why counteracting mitochondrial corrosion with antioxidant supplements is often unwise, and why our mitochondria, and therefore we ourselves, benefit instead from exercise, meditation, sleep, sunshine, and particular eating habits. Finally, we describe how malfunctioning mitochondria force rats to become socially subordinate to others, how such disparity can be evened off by a vitamin, and why these findings are relevant to us. SAGE Publications 2017-09-22 2018-01 /pmc/articles/PMC5761714/ /pubmed/28937858 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1745691617718356 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Article
Kramer, Peter
Bressan, Paola
Our (Mother’s) Mitochondria and Our Mind
title Our (Mother’s) Mitochondria and Our Mind
title_full Our (Mother’s) Mitochondria and Our Mind
title_fullStr Our (Mother’s) Mitochondria and Our Mind
title_full_unstemmed Our (Mother’s) Mitochondria and Our Mind
title_short Our (Mother’s) Mitochondria and Our Mind
title_sort our (mother’s) mitochondria and our mind
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5761714/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28937858
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1745691617718356
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