Spark!: How exercise will improve the performance of your brain

To take the example of karate, as you perfect certain forms, you can incorporate them into more complicated movements, and before long you have new responses to new situations. The same would hold true for learning tango. The fact that you have to react to another person puts further demands on your attention, judgment, and precision of movement, e

Learning the asanas of yoga, the positions of ballet, the skills of gymnastics, the elements of figure skating, the contortions of Pilates, the forms of karate—all these practices engage nerve cells throughout the brain. Studies of dancers, for example, show that moving to an irregular rhythm versus a regular one improves brain plasticity. Because

The more complex the movements, the more complex the synaptic connections. And even though these circuits are created through movement, they can be recruited by other areas and used for thinking.

This is why learning how to play the piano makes it easier for kids to learn math. The prefrontal cortex will co-opt the mental power of the physical skills and apply it to other situations.

Any motor skill more complicated than walking has to be learned, and thus it challenges the brain. At first you’re awkward and flail a little bit, but then as the circuits linking the cerebellum, basal ganglia, and prefrontal cortex get humming, your movements become more precise.

“neurogenesis is clearly involved in our interactions with our environment, both emotionally and cognitively,” says neuroscientist Fred Gage, of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California.

Now you know how exercise improves learning on three levels: first, it optimizes your mind-set to improve alertness, attention, and motivation; second, it prepares and encourages nerve cells to bind to one another, which is the cellular basis for logging in new information; and third, it spurs the development of new nerve cells from stem cells in t

lecturing to teachers and doctors about the positive impact of physical activity on mood, attention, self-esteem, and social skills,

Right now the front of your brain is firing signals about what you’re reading, and how much of it you soak up has a lot to do with whether there is a proper balance of neurochemicals and growth factors to bind neurons together. Exercise has a documented, dramatic effect on these essential ingredients. It sets the stage, and when you sit down to lea

My hope is that we can use these examples as a new cultural model and, ultimately, reconnect the body and the brain. As you’ll see, they belong together.