SubscribeA 2006 study out of the Division of Neuroscience and The Brain Research Center at University of British Columbia Hospital nicely summarizes one of the core teachings of brain enhancement:
- Regular doses of exercise can “massively increase” the growth of new brain cells in your brain.
The best part of it all, however, is the specific location of where many of these new brain cells are created: the hippocampus.
Why would you want new brain cells sprouting up here? The hippocampus turns out to be the memory engine of your brain.
People often ask whether anaerobic exercises can achieve these effects, and I tell them most of the evidence suggests aerobic is the key.
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Should this be daily or does it matter wether it is every couple of days or not?
I read an article in Newsweek relating to this. Another bonus to excercising, mainly running since weightlifting has shown little or no improvement in cognitive performance, is that every time a muscle contracts, relaxes, and contracts again, there is a protein released in the muscles called IGF-1 which travels through the bloodstream, across the blood-brain barrier (dura, I think is what they’re talking about), and into the brain. Here, it issues orders to ramp up several chemicals including one called BDNF (brain derived neurotrophic factor). This chemical causes the brian’s cells to branch out and communicate with each other in new ways. Over time, the body will increase its levels of BDNF, which will result higher IQ (due to the improvement in the frontal lobes), and an improved memory (the hippocampus could possibly work in abnormal ways). However, sadly, these results are not permenant, in older people that is. Stop excercising for a month and the brain’s performance will return to its previous ways. For those of you that are under twenty, good news, your frontal lobes have yet to fully develop and are still developing as you are reading this. Excercising improves the frontal lobes and hippocampus for a longer period of time, and with enough excercise, can make the results “permenant.” Competing in aerobic excercises improves the effects also, so since you are in high school or early college, I recommend joining cross country and/or track and field (more track than field). You’ll probably be the one setting the curve in your classes.
[...] Furthermore, changes were actually detected in the hippocampus via high tech brain scans called Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS). [...]