The brain of a five-year-old kid was "energy monster" - he uses two times more glucose than the adult brain, has been examined by anthropologists from northwestern University in Illinois, United States).

This discovery helped to understand why children grow significantly more slowly than the young of other mammals. A new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers studied the dynamics of the consumption of glucose and growth of the brain in 36 people. Scientists watched the group from birth to adulthood. It turns out that most resources (66 percent of all energy, which means the body is at rest), the brain consumes in 4 years - specifically when the growth of the body is restrained. Previously it was thought that the peak energy costs on the brain begins immediately after birth, when the weight of this body (conditionally uniform body weight) max.

"When the child is 4-6 years, it is very difficult to calculate its age by body size. Instead, you have to look at his behavior and to listen to his speech. Our research says that it is not a coincidence. In this age, the growth of the body almost stops, for the following reasons, the brain consumes all resources available to the body," says the Creator of studies Christopher Kuzawa (Christopher Kuzawa).

Specifically in these years people actively learns the world, because this period represents the maximum growth of synapses, the interconnections between neurons, which requires high amounts of energy, substantiate the results obtained by scientists.
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