Researchers at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG), Switzerland, have studied the neuronal activity of people faced with making the choice between physical activity and doing nothing. They noted that the brain requires far greater resources to escape a general attraction to minimizing effort. A struggle then breaks out between the desire to do nothing and the physical activity. The results, published in the journal Neuropsychologia, are consistent with the idea that our ancestors had to avoid unnecessary physical effort to increase their chances of survival – which, of course, is no longer necessary in our modern societies.
