Exercise is Proven to Improve Cognitive Function
Did you know that exercising and staying in shape can make you smarter? Researchers from the University of Mississippi have done a systematic review of studies done on the connection between exercise and functional brain connectivity. Healthy adults who exercised more were shown to have significantly improved brain function. Regular exercise strengthened the connectivity between different regions of the brain–and connectivity between brain regions is crucial to intelligence.
Studies Were Done on How Exercise Affects Brain Connectivity
The researchers, who studied 12 different studies done on a total of thousands of healthy adults, stated, “Among these 12 studies, there were 4, 7, and 1 study, respectively, examining the relationship between exercise and frontal lobe connectivity, temporal lobe connectivity, and whole-brain connectivity. Also, 7 studies examined the relationship between functional connectivity and cognitive performance across multiple brain regions as a function of exercise.” This means the studies explored how exercising more or less affects the ability of different brain regions to send signals to each other.
Regularly Exercising Greatly Improves Brain Function
What did these studies show? The researchers explain, “Cardiorespiratory fitness, habitual physical activity, and varying intensities of acute exercise can strengthen functional connections among a wide variety of regions and subcortical structures of the human brain. These exercise-induced functional connectivity changes within and between specific brain structures/networks supporting cognitive processing may improve various domains of cognitive function.” This means that regularly exercising, having good lung and heart health, and exercising more intensively improving brain function in a range of ways. The human brain can literally do better at sending signals between the different brain regions when a person is exercising regularly and in good shape.
- Moore, D., Jung, M., Hillman, C. H., Kang, M., & Loprinzi, P. D. (2022). Interrelationships between exercise, functional connectivity, and cognition among healthy adults: A systematic review. Psychophysiology, 59(6). https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.14014
