Cognition, physical activity & dementia
EVERY TIME we hear the words “athletes” or “jocks” we always associate these terms with poor academic performance or lacking descent cognitive abilities. Hence, the phrase “all brawn, no brain” was born, or “brawn over brain.” Stereotypical slogans.
The idea of an athlete doing better in sports than in academic is not unfamiliar.
How can we not picture athletes this way when movies and TV shows always draw up sports-inclined characters struggling to cope up with academic challenges? Then the formulaic school jock will the date the introverted, nerdy but pretty girl of the class just so he has someone as backup every time there are homework or school projects.
But that connotation is starting to dissolve against the backdrop of new scientific researches. Each year, it becomes clearer just how physical motor-skills and cognitive abilities are intertwined.
In the sports neuroscience domain, enhancing performance through physical-cognitive training still remains relatively new ground.
Researchers in British Columbia found that regular aerobic exercise, the kind that gets your heart and your sweat glands pumping, appears to boost the size of the hippocampus, the brain area involved in verbal memory and learning. Resistance training, balance and muscle toning exercises did not have the same results.
This finding could not have come in time any better than now because scientists have estimated that there is one case of dementia detected every four seconds worldwide. This could simply mean a staggering number of more than 115 million people with diagnosed and undiagnosed dementia by 2050.
In 2014, two studies positively correlated physical activity to improved cognitive function.
In the first study, researchers from the University of Minnesota found that young adults who run or participate in aerobic activities preserved their thinking and memory skills for middle age. The second study, from Finland, found that physically active middle-aged people protect themselves from dementia in older age.
So how exactly does this work? Exercise helps memory and thinking through both direct and indirect means. The benefits of exercise come directly from its ability to reduce insulin resistance, reduce inflammation, and stimulate the release of growth factors — chemicals in the brain that affect the health of brain cells, the growth of new blood vessels in the brain, and even the abundance and survival of new brain cells. Whereas, indirectly, exercise improves mood and sleep as well as reducing stress and anxiety. Cognitive impairment is usually associated with these areas.
According to the article published by Heidi Godman from Harvard Medical School, Harvard Health Publishing, “Many studies have suggested that the parts of the brain that control thinking and memory (the prefrontal cortex and medial temporal cortex) have greater volume in people who exercise versus people who don’t.
Even more exciting is the finding that engaging in a program of regular exercise of moderate intensity over six months or a year is associated with an increase in the volume of selected brain regions,” says Dr. Scott McGinnis, a neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School.
The findings from the above- mentioned studies definitely prove the case for being physically active is equivalent to a significant improvement in the cognitive capacity and functional ability of an individual. (Paid article)