How Exercise Leads To A Better Brain.
For more than a decade, neuroscientists and physiologists have been gathering evidence of the beneficial relationship between exercise and brainpower — and recent discoveries suggest that training may beat studying when it comes to building brainpower.
Using sophisticated technologies to examine the workings of individual neurons — and the makeup of brain matter itself — scientists have discovered that exercise can actually build a brain that resists physical shrinkage and while at the same time enhances cognitive flexibility.
In short: A team of researchers led by Justin S. Rhodes, a psychology professor at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, gathered four groups of mice and set them into four distinct living arrangements. Group One lived in a world of sensual and gustatory plenty. Group Two had access to all of these pleasures, plus they had small disc-shaped running wheels in their cages. A third group’s cages held no embellishments, and received standard, dull kibble. The fourth group’s homes contained the running wheels but no other toys or treats.
After several months, Rhodes’s team examined his subjects’ brain tissue — and found that the toys and tastes, no matter how stimulating, had not improved the animals’ brains.
“Only one thing had mattered,” Rhodes says, “and that’s whether they had a running wheel.” Animals that exercised, whether or not they had any other enrichments in their cages, had healthier brains and performed significantly better on cognitive tests than the other mice.
Why would exercise build brainpower? In VERY short: The brain, like all muscles and organs, is a tissue, and its function declines with underuse and age — and exercise can slow or even reverse its physical decay.