About this episode

This episode features a full audiobook of 'Mental Fatigue' by Tsuru Arai, exploring the effects of prolonged mental labor on the mind and body.

Mental Fatigue by Tsuru Arai audiobook. Genre: science In Mental Fatigue, pioneering psychologist Tsuru Arai turns a deceptively simple question into a rigorous investigation: what happens to the mind when it is pushed to keep working long after effort begins to feel heavy? Written at the dawn of experimental psychology, the book opens with a historical survey of earlier theories of fatigue and then moves into Arai's own carefully structured studies. Through demanding sessions of calculation, memory, and association work, she traces how prolonged mental labor affects speed, accuracy, bodily responses, and the subjective feeling of exhaustion. The central conflict is not between people, but between competing ways of understanding tiredness: does the sensation of fatigue match an actual drop in mental efficiency, or can the mind feel spent while still performing? As Arai compares measurable results with inner experience, the book develops into a sharp exploration of attention, effort, self observation, and the limits of endurance. Compact yet ambitious, Mental Fatigue is both a landmark scientific study and a revealing portrait of psychology as it was learning how to measure…

Topics covered

• mental fatigue
• psychology
• experimental psychology
• cognitive effort
• fatigue studies

Keywords

• mental fatigue
• psychology
• Tsuru Arai
• cognitive effort
• fatigue
• audiobook
• experimental psychology

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Mental Fatigue

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