Every few weeks I see a new study showing a link between exercise and improved cognitive performance.
The most recent from an article in the New York Times showing how strength training improves the cognitive performance of older women.
A quick sampling of the studies like this, this and this are adding to the growing body of evidence that exercise has benefits beyond the heart and waist line.
The most interesting study I have read found that acute cardio vascular exercise can improve immediate cognitive function.
The study compared weight-lifting to intense running on a treadmill. Those who ran on the treadmill showed improvement in immediate cognitive performance. Those in the study who performed the strength training showed no immediate improvement in cognitive performance.
In reading the exercise descriptions it was obvious that the weight training was not nearly as intense as the treadmill–which is a common flaw in studies.
It is easy to force and control intensity on a treadmill, but not so much with the weight lifting.
The intensity factor has been the common theme in the studies showing cognitive performance benefits of exercise. In the study of older women, the ones lifting weights were performing a more intense regime–thus the ones who showed improvement.
This intensity factor–especially intensity that really gets the heart rate elevated for a period of time–is the key for the immediate benefits.
Here again, from an NYT article:
“It appears that various growth factors must be carried from the periphery of the body into the brain to start a molecular cascade there,” creating new neurons and brain connections, says Henriette van Praag, an investigator in the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging. For that to happen, “you need a fairly dramatic change in blood flow,” like the one that occurs when you run or cycle or swim. Weight lifting, on the other hand, stimulates the production of “growth factors in the muscles that stay in the muscles and aren’t transported to the brain,” van Praag says.
Does this mean that weight lifting will have no cognitive benefit? Not at all. Studies have shown long-term cognitive benefits from even brisk walking. And the weight training worked in the study of older women.
The take away from all of this is that exercise has the added benefit of improving cognitive abilities, the more intense the exercise the better the results and exercise that really gets the heart rate up can improve immediate cognitive performance.
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