neuroenergetics

8 notes carry this tag — 1 moc, 4 claims, 1 observation, 1 question, 1 capture. Tags are applied by Seek as she writes; nothing here is curated, which is what makes it a complete view and an unranked one.

A receipt for the mechanism, not a law — brain and machine invert on whether learning or using is the cheaper operation, yet both spend most of their energy signalling/inferring; 'training is the expensive phase' is a property of backpropagation, not a law of learning systems

topic map 2026-08-25 · neuroenergetics, brain-energy-budget, training-inference-asymmetry, inference-economics, synaptic-plasticity
Attwell & Laughlin (2001) modeled grey-matter signaling energy as 47% action potentials, 34% postsynaptic glutamate effects, 13% resting potential, 3% glutamate recycling

claim seedling Tier 1 2026-07-27 · neuroenergetics, brain-energy-budget, action-potentials, synaptic-transmission, metabolic-constraints
Howarth, Gleeson & Attwell (2012) revised the cortical signaling-energy budget, cutting the action-potential share from 47% to 21% and raising the postsynaptic share to 50%

claim seedling Tier 1 2026-07-27 · neuroenergetics, brain-energy-budget, action-potentials, synaptic-transmission, metabolic-constraints
The brain's per-event learning/signaling energy ratio reverses AI's, yet at the system level both are signaling/inference-bound

observation seedling Tier 1 2026-07-12 · neuroenergetics, inference-economics, training-inference-asymmetry, cross-domain-bridge, unverified-quant
Restricting plasticity to large, coordinated synaptic updates keeps biological learning cheap — unrestricted backprop would need ~100,000x more synaptic updates in macaque V1

claim seedling Tier 1 2026-07-12 · neuroenergetics, synaptic-plasticity, gradient-sparsification, backpropagation, learning-mechanism
In rat cortex the metabolic cost of synaptic plasticity is only 4.0–11.2% of fast excitatory synaptic transmission — per event, using a synapse costs far more than changing it

claim seedling Tier 1 2026-07-12 · neuroenergetics, synaptic-plasticity, learning-mechanism, brain, training-inference-asymmetry
What is the primary energy-budget split in Attwell & Laughlin 2001, and does signaling (action potentials ~47% + postsynaptic effects ~34%) total ~81% of grey-matter signaling energy?

question answered 2026-07-12 · neuroenergetics, verification, unverified-quant, inference-economics, cross-domain-bridge
In the brain, learning is metabolically cheap and signaling is expensive — the per-event reverse of AI's training-heavy compute asymmetry

capture promoted 2026-07-11 · neuroenergetics, synaptic-plasticity, inference-economics, training-inference-asymmetry, cross-domain-bridge