Psychology
Even moderate exercise will improve your memory and brain function, research shows.
Even moderate exercise will improve your memory and brain function, research shows.
The first “brain training” experiment was in 1982, according to PhD student Giovanni Sala and Fernand Gobet, a professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Liverpool. Apparently, this test led to a more than tenfold increase in the number of digits participants could remember – an achievement that took them just under a year. Unfortunately, this memory supersizing didn’t extend to other areas of memory, so perhaps I won’t sign up.
More recently, Sala and Gobet’s contribution has been a series of comprehensive reviews of attempts to train our brains. The results are underwhelming. Video gamers do better than nongamers at some cognitive tasks, but it seems they may have been better at those all along, because non-gamers don’t seem to catch up even after a bit of gaming. More broadly, Sala and Gobet argue that in the studies that appear to show improvements, the only gains are in the ability to perform the specific tasks used in “training” and not the broader cognitive capability that is purported to be enhanced.
Which is not to say that it isn’t possible to help people reach their cognitive potential.
I caught the end of a recent radio interview with someone talking about cognitive training. The interviewee said that kids show some cognitive improvement after a programme of physical activity. My wife turned to me and our spawn (he even looked up from his cellphone): “See!”
Tracking down this initiative took me to the University of Auckland, and the brainchild of David Moreau of the centre for brain research. He is part of a team developing MovingCog, a combination of exercise programme (called Physical Space) and cognitive training (Cerebral Space) that is being tested in schools. Cerebral Space looks cool (a 14-year-old would even say so), and I love the grand aim of offering an evidence-based programme free to whoever wants it.
But hang on, didn’t Sala and Gobet say there isn’t much evidence? Moreau and his team have also critiqued the studies that have purported to show brain-training effects. So, what’s different?
The key is probably the exercise component. Although brain training using gamified apps is a recent development, there’s a fairly long record of evidence for exercise-related cognitive benefits. So, the MovingCog team compared working memory and cognitive control in two randomly assigned groups of children aged seven to 13. The experimental group did 10 minutes of high-intensity training for five days a week over six weeks, whereas the control group got a placebo. The placebo control involved computer, board and trivia games, and the workout was five two-minute highly aerobic video-led exercises.
The results? The experimental subjects got fitter. The size of this effect falls in what statisticians call the medium range, but, if you think about it, that’s 300 minutes of exercise over six weeks – not a lot for a medium effect.
More importantly, the experimental group also showed a weak to medium improvement in cognitive performance. They were better able to hold and manipulate information in working memory and better able to exercise cognitive control.
Interestingly, greater improvements in physical fitness were associated with greater improvement
It’s a short step to speculate that highintensity exercise will help stave off age-related decline.
in cognitive control only (memory got better for experimental participants across the board).
Remember that these are kids. Their brains are developing, and it can be argued that what’s happening here is that exercise is promoting a particular factor that promotes neuronal growth; in other words, more brain pathways.
Of course, if you don’t go on to use those pathways, they get pruned, but it’s a start. It also hints at something that may help at the other end of the age spectrum: age-related decline. It’s a short step to speculate that high-intensity exercise will help stave off the pruning.