They may have lost to Oxford this year, but Cambridge’s male student rowers may have worked out the winner from another age-old contest.

A specially-selected student crew worked with a team of scientists to pit muscle against grey matter in a bid to determine once and for all whether brains or brawn come out on top.

The researchers studied rowers' metabolic levels to see which the body prefers when both are tested, the Mirror reports.

And the team found when both were pitted against each other, it was brains that came out on top.

Sorry guys, it's brains, not muscles that won this one
Sorry guys, it's brains, not muscles that won this one

"A well-fuelled brain may have offered us better survival odds than well-fuelled muscles when facing an environmental challenge," said Dr Danny Longman, the study's lead author.

The researchers, from Cambridge's PAVE (Phenotypic Adaptability, Variation and Evolution) research group tested 62 male students from the university's rowing team.

The rowers all performed two separate tasks at once. The first was a mental three-minute word recall test and the second was a physical three-minute power test on a rowing machine.

"During the simultaneous challenge, recall fell by an average of 9.7 per cent, while power fell by an average of 12.6 per cent.

“Across all participants the drop in physical power was on average 29.8 per cent greater than drop in cognitive function," the university reported.

The team say their results, published in the journal Scientific Reports, are evidence of the "selfish brain" hypothesis. This basically states that the human brain will prioritise itself when it comes to energy consumption over other parts of the body, like muscles and organs.

"The development of an enlarged and elaborated brain is considered a defining characteristic of human evolution, but one that has come as a result of trade-offs," said Dr Longman.

They're strong, but can the complete a fiendish crossword puzzle?
They're strong, but can the complete a fiendish crossword puzzle?

"At the evolutionary level, our brains have arguably cost us decreased investment in muscle as well as a shrunken digestive system.

"Developmentally, human babies have more stored fat than other mammals, acting as an energy buffer that feeds our high cerebral requirements.

"On an acute level, we have now demonstrated that when humans simultaneously experience extremes of physical and mental exertion, our internal trade-off preserves cognitive function as the body's priority."

He also says the brain's dominance in consuming energy - almost exclusively from metabolising glucose - can be seen by its resilience in the face of extreme deprivation.

"The selfish nature of the brain has been observed in the unique preservation of brain mass as bodies waste away in people suffering from long-term malnutrition or starvation, as well as in children born with growth restriction," he said.
