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Study Finds You Can Grow Brain Cells Through Exercise

Posted by yaelk on from the how-to-get-smarter dept.

phantomfive writes: Researchers have discovered that aerobic exercise may increase neurogenesis. Based on the results, rats that were put on a treadmill grew more brain cells than rats that didn't. Resistance training seemed to have no effect. This is significant, because the neuron reserve of the hippocampus can be increased, thus preconditions for learning for humans could be improved simply through aerobic exercise.

18 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Nerve connections for muscles by peon_a-z,A-Z,0-9$_+! · · Score: 5, Informative

    Brain cells and associated nerve connections are necessary to operate muscles. If you exercise more, or perhaps even hone a skill associated with exercise (playing basketball or tennis perhaps), then you would also expect the brain to grow connections associated with these activities.

    So yes, the brain grows. Does it make a person smarter? Not necessarily, it makes a person more able to move that muscle with finer control.

    Also, this seems to be a repeat of the same study in the past, though its first occurrence on /.?:

    http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/10/study-people-who-exercise-have-larger-brains-later-in-life/264017/

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2013/10/13/how-exercise-makes-your-brain-grow/#18d2c88248c1

    1. Re:Nerve connections for muscles by advocate_one · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Brain cells and associated nerve connections are necessary to operate muscles. If you exercise more, or perhaps even hone a skill associated with exercise (playing basketball or tennis perhaps), then you would also expect the brain to grow connections associated with these activities.

      so why then doesn't this work for 'resistance' training? After all, you are exercising muscles.

      --
      Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
    2. Re:Nerve connections for muscles by EvilAlphonso · · Score: 3, Informative

      Resistance training leads to change in the nervous system, but possibly not in the brain. Relevant research

    3. Re:Nerve connections for muscles by vtcodger · · Score: 2

      Does this mean that we're going to see our senators and representatives doing Japanese style mass exercise sessions every morning with weights? After all, if there is one thing in this divided country that most folks agree on, it is that many of our elected representatives could use a few more brain cells.

      --
      You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
    4. Re:Nerve connections for muscles by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      RTFA: " learning temporally and/or spatially complex tasks. " It has nothing to do with simply exercising muscles.

    5. Re:Nerve connections for muscles by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The slashdot moderation system is horribly broken, isn't it? OP gets modded +5 Informative for posting something that's flatly wrong per the article, and a link that contradicts his own post (the first one, not going to click the forbes one). So neither the OP nor the mods read the article. It's the blind leading the blind around here.

    6. Re:Nerve connections for muscles by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 3, Informative

      In my research of nootropics, I came across Noopept.

      Noopept is considered one of the most powerful nootropics, a thousand times stronger than Piracetam. Among other things, Noopept increases BNF and BDNF in the brain. These chemicals power neurogenesis, encouraging the formation of new brain cells and greatly increasing neuroplasticity.

      What does "greatly increasing" mean?

      Scientists test rats with many apparatuses. Most of these are repetitive tools, like a pool of water with a few small, hidden platforms (you drop the rat in to drown, and it panics and seeks out the platform; then you repeat the trial, leaving or moving the platforms, reorienting the device, or whatnot, to see if the rat can recognize environment cues or apply an efficient search algorithm). One of the most useful tools is a simple T maze, in which corridors abruptly meet a wall with a choice of left or right alternate path.

      Rats navigating the T maze eventually find food at the end. In repeated trials, rats learn the topology of the maze, eventually running to the end of the T maze by the most direct path. This essentially tests rat memory.

      Rats run on a wheel for 10 minutes before and after running a T maze *consistently* learn the maze in half as many trials as a control group of rats kept lazy in cage.

      The source of this increase in learning speed? An increase in BNF and BDNF in the brain.

      Bicycling, running, jumping jacks, whatnot. These things will exercise you. The exercise temporarily increases BNF and BDNF levels measurable in human blood serum. Like the rats, the humans become significantly more intelligent.

      This study doesn't surprise me. I already knew this shit.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    7. Re:Nerve connections for muscles by gymell · · Score: 4, Informative

      Resistance training leads to change in the nervous system, but possibly not in the brain. Relevant research

      The studies you mention are from 1988 and 2006, respectively. A more recent study from 2015 concludes otherwise:

      This study provides the first evidence for strength training-related changes in white matter and putamen in the healthy adult brain.

  2. No cure for Stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    So people who are both stupid and aerobically exercise are that dumb even *after* they're cheating?

    There is no proven cure for Stupid, only for ignorant.

  3. Well.. by neo8750 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm screwed then. *gets more settled in his seat*

    1. Re:Well.. by asylumx · · Score: 2

      Well, I guess this is my chance to... wait... why am I here again? What article were we talking about? Meh, guess I'll have a snickers.

  4. So... by Darinbob · · Score: 4, Funny

    So, they're saying I can get smarter by logging off of slashdot and going outside?

    1. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      If you just exercised more, you would already know the answer to your question.

    2. Re:So... by Crowd+Computing · · Score: 3, Funny

      No, this is an evil ploy to make you use the mobile version of slashdot. Desktop users are doomed.

  5. Well... by EmeraldBot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is very interesting, but part of the article mentions that some rats were more predispositioned to benefit than others through genetics. If that applies to humans as well, that means this running will benefit only some of us with an increased hippocampus size. However, one should be getting aerobic exercise anyway, although many of us don't; the health benefits are well worth it.

    --
    "Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
  6. Re:This list of /.'ers need to exercise by phantomfive · · Score: 2

    I'm somewhat concerned to find I'm not on that list. You must not have read my posts!

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  7. Re:Alzheimers? by GrumpySteen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There is some evidence that exercise benefits people with Alzheimer's, but the how and why is not well understood.

  8. Re:By that logic, the Japanese... by ITRambo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Japan has the highest average life expectancy on the planet at 84 years. The US is 79 years. Exercise has more than one benefit.