Brains get bigger and better with Aerobic Exercise

Can you believe that walking, swimming, cycling, running can make your brain bigger and better ?

It seems so. Look at these images.


The images come from research on people in their 60s and 70s who went through 6 months of aerobic training. The blue areas in the image show areas of grey brain matter that became bigger after aerobic exercise. The yellow areas in the images show white brain matter areas that became larger.

As usual with a clinical trial there was a control group who did light exercise and stretching. They all had their brains MRI scanned before and after the 6 month trial. Result: white and gray matter within the brains of the aerobic exercisers but no change to the brains of the light exercisers.

The researchers also investigated people in the age range 18 to 30 to find out if aerobic exercise increased the size of their brains. The answer: no; aerobic exercise had no impact on brain size in this group.

The research report starts off with a scaring thought "Beginning in the third decade of life, the human brain shows structural decline, which is disproportionately large in the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes of the brain. This decline is contemporaneously associated with deterioration in a broad array of cognitive processes."

An interview with one of the authors of the study - Art Kramer.

ACSM's Health & Fitness Journal has an article "Exercising the Brain" by Janet Fletcher Brady. She Has a few thoughts on types of exercises that improve brain health:

• Movements across the mid-line of the body. The swing action of arms across the body while running or walking fast might fall into this category.
• Reaction movements. These are rapid movements in reaction to a signal - say a light flashing.

AARP Magazine has a piece on "How breaking a sweat and doing yoga can make you smarter."

It includes this interesting idea of how to modify a Yoga exercise to make it more brain productive. While yoga has long been shown to affect mood, one yoga move in particular is getting attention for boosting brainpower. Superbrain Yoga, as the exercise is called, is being practiced across the country as an antidote to brain drain. Go ahead. Try it!

This simple move, shown at right, boosts brain function by stimulating acupressure points on the earlobes, according to Yale-trained neurobiologist Eugenius Ang, Ph.D.

Step 1 Place your left hand on your right earlobe, thumb on the front of the lobe with fingernail facing outward and second finger behind the earlobe. Then, with your right hand, grasp your left earlobe, again keeping your thumb on the front of the lobe, facing outward. Press both earlobes simultaneously, making sure your left arm is close to your chest and inside your right (which devotees say helps energy travel upward to the brain).

Step 2 As you press on the earlobes, squat down, keeping your back straight. Do 10 to 12 deep bends, inhaling through the nose on the way down and exhaling through the mouth coming up. You may place a chair underneath you as a safety precaution.

Step 3 Repeat daily. “It’s like putting more gas in your brain’s tank,” says Ang. To learn more, read Superbrain Yoga by Master Choa Kok Sui. —Janet Kinosian.

If you want to catch up with the research then start reading these interviews with leading neuroscience and cognitive scientists.

One last thought. What exactly is aerobic exercise? Is it 50% maximum heart rate or 60% maximum heart rate or something else ? Even if you happen to know your maximum heart rate, trying to guess if you are at 50% or 60% or some other % is too difficult. The safe and easy answer - after 10 minutes are you sweating just a little. If so, it's aerobic exercise.

Exercise for a better brain.