For years we at Posit Science have stressed our brain training exercises and the best way to keep mentally fit. Yet, its not the only thing we have stressed. Physical Exercise and a good diet are also 2 key pieces in the overall brain health realm. An ideal day would contain both physical and mental exercising and a well balanced diet.
In a recent NY Times article, they also stressed the importance of the physical exercise.
“Last year, in an important study published in NeuroImage, the researchers found for the first time that young brain cells in adult mice that spent a month with running wheels in their cages did seem to be different from those in animals that did not run. For the experiment, the scientists injected a modified rabies vaccine into the animals, where it entered the nervous system and brain. They then tracked and labeled connections between brain cells and learned that compared to the sedentary animals’ brain cells, the runners’ newborn neurons had more and longer dendrites, the snaky tendrils that help to connect the cells into the neural communications network. They also found that more of these connections led to portions of the brain that are important for spatial memory, which is our internal map of where we have been and how we got there.
This study was done on mice, which is not the same as humans obviously. It is more evidence though that movement and activity are great for the brain.
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