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

“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.

It’s a handy metaphor to get the point across, but the deeper explanation is that exercise balances neurotransmitters—along with the rest of the neurochemicals in the brain. And as you’ll see, keeping your brain in balance can change your life.

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.

For an inner-city school to go through such a rapid transformation, and for such a depressed town as Titusville to come alive as it has, is remarkable. McCord’s community rallies around the Stephanies of the world rather than just the football team, and as the schoolchildren grow up, a larger percentage will continue to move and be active. They’ll

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

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.

Only a mobile creature needs a brain, points out New York University neurophysiologist Rodolfo Llinás in his 2002 book, I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self.

The ability to stop and consider a response, to use the experience of a wrong choice as a guide in making the next decision, relates to executive function, which is controlled by an area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex.

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