Health & Medicine
Does Exercise help keep you Sane? Fitness Increases Blood and Oxygen to Pre-Frontal Cortex
Kathleen Lees
First Posted: Mar 07, 2013 12:43 AM EST
For workout lovers everywhere, statistics show that it might actually be true that a little cardio or yoga will help keep you sane.
As a result of increased blood and oxygen flow to the pre-frontal cortex, researchers believe that this will help produce a calm effect for fitness enthusiasts.
They trawled medical research databases for studies looking at the impact of physical exercise on higher brain functions, such as memory, concentration, planning, and decision-making, in three groups: 6 to 12 year olds; 13 to 17 year olds; and 18 to 35 year olds.
Findings showed that 24 relevant studies published up to April 2012. Nineteen of these, involving 586 participants, addressed the impact of short bouts of exercise, and five, involving 358 participants, addressed the impact of regular exercise.
Though regular exercise didn't seem to have much impact on higher brain functions, according to the analysis, the analysis showed that results were too inconsistent to enable firm conclusions to be drawn.
Yet short bouts of exercise did actually boost higher brain function in all three age groups, and for the 12 of the 19 studies looked at self control, and the analysis indicated that short bouts of exercise did improve this higher brain function across all three age groups, registering a small to moderate impact.
This is particularly important for children and teens, because well developed higher brain functions are important for academic achievement and other aspect of daily life, according to the authors.
"These positive effects of physical exercise on inhibition/interference control are encouraging and highly relevant, given the importance of inhibitory control and interference control in daily life," they write.
"Inhibition is essential for regulation of behaviour and emotions in social, academic, and sport settings," they add.
They speculate that short bouts of exercise may boost the cerebral blood flow to the pre-frontal areas of the brain, responsible for higher (executive) functions.
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First Posted: Mar 07, 2013 12:43 AM EST
For workout lovers everywhere, statistics show that it might actually be true that a little cardio or yoga will help keep you sane.
As a result of increased blood and oxygen flow to the pre-frontal cortex, researchers believe that this will help produce a calm effect for fitness enthusiasts.
They trawled medical research databases for studies looking at the impact of physical exercise on higher brain functions, such as memory, concentration, planning, and decision-making, in three groups: 6 to 12 year olds; 13 to 17 year olds; and 18 to 35 year olds.
Findings showed that 24 relevant studies published up to April 2012. Nineteen of these, involving 586 participants, addressed the impact of short bouts of exercise, and five, involving 358 participants, addressed the impact of regular exercise.
Though regular exercise didn't seem to have much impact on higher brain functions, according to the analysis, the analysis showed that results were too inconsistent to enable firm conclusions to be drawn.
Yet short bouts of exercise did actually boost higher brain function in all three age groups, and for the 12 of the 19 studies looked at self control, and the analysis indicated that short bouts of exercise did improve this higher brain function across all three age groups, registering a small to moderate impact.
This is particularly important for children and teens, because well developed higher brain functions are important for academic achievement and other aspect of daily life, according to the authors.
"These positive effects of physical exercise on inhibition/interference control are encouraging and highly relevant, given the importance of inhibitory control and interference control in daily life," they write.
"Inhibition is essential for regulation of behaviour and emotions in social, academic, and sport settings," they add.
They speculate that short bouts of exercise may boost the cerebral blood flow to the pre-frontal areas of the brain, responsible for higher (executive) functions.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone