{"id":3627,"date":"2018-07-17T08:00:48","date_gmt":"2018-07-17T13:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=3627"},"modified":"2018-07-15T15:16:13","modified_gmt":"2018-07-15T20:16:13","slug":"exercise-and-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/exercise-and-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"Can a Quick Bicycle Ride Help You Learn Better?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can exercise improve memory?<\/p>\n

\"exercise<\/a>That fascinating question has inspired a lot of research. The answer you get often depends quite specifically<\/em> on the kind of exercise, and the kind of memory, that you study.<\/p>\n

For example, a recent study asks this question<\/a>:<\/p>\n

If you exercise after you learn a new motor skill<\/strong>, do you remember that new skill better?<\/p>\n

More specifically, if you ride a bike for 20 minutes<\/strong>, does that help?<\/p>\n

(The new motor skill is a little tricky to describe. Basically, you use a joystick to make your cursor follow an irregularly moving line.)<\/p>\n

Exercise and Memory: Promising Results<\/h2>\n

Marc Roig and colleagues had 18-35 years do just that. One group rode a stationary bike for 20 minutes before<\/strong> they learned the joystick task. Another group exercised after<\/strong>. And the control group rested quietly<\/strong> for 20 minutes.<\/p>\n

What difference did that make?<\/p>\n

Helpfully, Roig & Co. retested these participants 3 times: an hour later, a day later, and — marvelously — a week later.<\/p>\n

(Many researchers retest participants after an hour or two. That time gap is interesting, but it hardly feels like\u00a0learning…<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Sure enough: after 7 days, participants who exercised — either before or after<\/em> — did better on the task than those who didn’t exercise at all.<\/p>\n

And, those who exercised AFTER did better than those who exercised BEFORE.<\/p>\n

So: we’ve got good reason to think that aerobic exercise after learning a motor skill helps you remember that new skill.<\/p>\n

Exercise and Memory: Important Limitations<\/h2>\n

As noted at the top of this post: the answer to the “exercise and memory” question depends on the specific exercise, and the specific kind of memory.<\/p>\n

This study looked narrowly at a visuo-motor task.<\/p>\n

We would like to say: “Hey! Let’s have students do jumping jacks after they learn a new geometry theorem. After all: exercise helps learning!”<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, we don’t have consistent research showing that exercise directly improves this kind of academic learning.<\/p>\n

For example, in one of my favorite studies, Steven Most & Co. found contradictory results<\/a> when they tested declarative learning and exercise. In his 4 studies: half of the time, that exercise benefited<\/strong> women but not men<\/strong>. Half of the time, it didn’t benefit either women or men<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

(I like this study so much because Most and his team are so scrupulous in making their contradictory results clear.)<\/p>\n

At the same time, we should remember: brains are a part of the body. We’ve got LOTS of research showing that the habit of exercise is good for the brain, and helps students learn.<\/p>\n

If you’re especially interested in this topic, I recommend John Ratey’s book\u00a0Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.\u00a0<\/em>(It’s not so revolutionary or new anymore, but it’s an easy and persuasive read.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can exercise improve memory? That fascinating question has inspired a lot of research. The answer you get often depends quite specifically on the kind of exercise, and the kind of memory, that you study. For example, a recent study asks this question: If you exercise after you learn a new motor skill, do you remember […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":3633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[33,23],"class_list":["post-3627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-exercise","tag-long-term-memory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3627"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3635,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3627\/revisions\/3635"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}