Mindframe

You already know that exercise is good for you. You may already know that exercise is good for your mind. For instance, you may have encountered studies which show how half an hour of vigorous exercise gives you a boost in brain-derived neurotropic growth factor or BDNF, what’s sometimes referred to as “ miracle-gro for the brain .” That’s not the kind of nickname that comes casually; BDNF stimulates the production of new brain cells and increases your neuroplasticity, which allows the components of your brain to work more smoothly with each other. A 2016 study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease found that the top quartile of older individuals who kept active retained noticeably more grey matter than the others, specifically in areas related to memory and higher-level thinking. And those with more grey matter were also shown to be 50% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s or other memory problems over the next five years. “If we want to live a long time but also k...

If you’re not, say, a recent time traveler from the Middle Ages, by now you’ve probably heard that exercise is good for you. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you likely also know that exercise benefits the brain in a seemingly ever-expanding list of ways. Regular aerobic activity has been found to increase memory, boost cognitive skills, fight depression, and slow the effects of age-related mental fog, among other things. There’s just one problem: it’s not necessarily a good time.   For the less athletic among us, mention of exercise can conjure flashbacks of high school gym class, of dodgeball injuries and rope-climbing humiliations. And while the ability to make a mad dash for it has surely saved our species on countless occasions, the body may not feel rewarded in the early days of a jogging routine. Some can rely on the rosy glow of personal satisfaction and the legendary “runner’s high” to stay on the exercise train, while others may need a bit more of an incent...

Good news for those of you who make it a point to stay physically active: a recent experiment may suggest that regular exercise decreases the effects of age-related memory loss. In a study published in the journal Cortex , a group of young people (18 to 31 years old) and a group of older folks (55 to 74) each completed a memory test and a fitness test. To determine their memory chops, the participants had to essentially practice attaching a name to a new face—frequently a vexing task for people of a certain age. Instead of meeting strangers, they viewed pictures of unfamiliar faces, each attached to a name they had to learn—all while observed in an MRI machine. The fitness test involved walking and running on a treadmill; by measuring the ratio of oxygen and carbon dioxide in their inhalations and exhalations, researchers could ascertain what’s called the cardiorespiratory fitness of each subject. While overall the young ones had an easier time with the names...