Memory And Exercise Psychology

Physical activity is able to shift neurons in your brain from a revved, stressed state-more vulnerable to dangerous cardiac rhythms and heart attacks-to a relaxed state.

In the book, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and The Brain by Dr. John J. Ratey, MD (2008), Ratey discuses how exercise can help treat many mood disorders and how it can help strengthen our brains. This book is divided into ten chapters all with five to ten subsections in them. The chapters include: Welcome to the revolution: A Case Study on Exercise and the brain, Learning, Stress, Anxiety, Depression, Attention Deficit, Addiction, Hormonal Changers, Aging, and the Regimen.

Exercise may benefit the brain by increasing blood and oxygen flow due to its known cardiovascular benefits since the head and heart seem to have a connection when conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol have been linked to increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s (Alzheimer’s Association, 2016). Furthermore, treatment is available as of today that may temporarily help memory and thinking problems, but this medications do not treat the origin of

For years, my father, a high school basketball and track and field coach has been telling my sister and I that athletes are superior students to non-athlete students. After reading this chapter in Ratey’s book, I believe that he may have been right. When Ratey compares the human brain to a muscle, the concept that exercise results in enhanced brain functioning makes sense. The quote from the text, “by pushing our bodies we push our brains” helped me realize that the two are not separate. Our brain, or our cognition is not a separate entity from our physicality.

Blakemore (1988) defines memory as the ability to retain information from past experiences. According to a study done by Brown-Peterson, the average person’s short-term memory is 60% accurate (Gross et al., 2015). According to a research experiment, conducted by Stroth et al. (2011), a possible way of increasing memory is through aerobic exercise. Stroth et al. (2011), concluded that aerobic exercise improves the visual memory by 25%. According to a study done Leavitt et al. (2014), aerobic exercise can increase the volume of the hippocampus, which has been linked to memory formation and short-term memory, by 16.5 %. Previous studies have revealed that there is a causal relationship between aerobic exercise and memory; however, previous studies have not looked into ways that improve short-term memory (Holt et al., 2015). This study tests the hypothesis, that aerobic exercise has a positive correlation with short-term memory, and that 30 minutes of aerobic exercise can increase the accuracy of a person’s short-term memory by 10-20 %.

“If it’s safe for you, engage in cardiovascular exercise to elevate your heart rate. This will increase the blood flow to your brain and body, providing additional nourishment while reducing potential dementia risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol” (Alzheimer's Association 1). There have been many claims about exercise being correlated to better work and brain productivity. To prove these claims, one must perform an experiment through the scientific method. In this particular instance, the scientific method starts with one asking the question, “Do people who exercise have better brain performance than those who don’t?” Afterwards, a hypothesis is made. One theory states that there is a strong correlation between

that physical activity positively effects the brain. I feel good when I exercise, I’m less

I decided to choose an article relating to the topic we covered about energy. The article is called Exercise-Induced Muscle Factor Promotes Memory by Ruth Williams. In this article, scientists have discovered a protein which is produced and developed by muscle during exercise; the particular is called cathepsin B.

Exercise allows certain neurotransmitters to be released in the brain to relieve mental and physical pain. It does this by exerting its effects to the brain through several mechanisms. Any time of aerobic exercise boosts neural connections by increasing the amount of dendrite connections between each neuron. Exercise has an effect on reaction time because of the increased circulation in the brain, which allows the body to process information quicker which leads to a faster reaction time. Another way exercise increases reaction time is when the muscles are able to react to stimuli with more accuracy when the muscle has more

These findings are important for older adults and suggest that performing a single bout of exercise can improve cognitive performance. These results also indicate that good fitness levels can maximize these beneficial cognitive effects (i.e., processing speed of cognitive performance) induced by acute exercise.

Regular exercise is believed to have a huge impact in increasing cognitive ability in individuals. The link between of chronic physical activity and oxygenated haemoglobin in the anterior frontal gyrus of 52 healthy young women was studied (Cameron et al., 2015). The participants were split into groups depending on the amount of physical activity they do regularly. This ranged from 0 being inactive to 3 which is the participant has met the recommended physical activity level, set by the World Health Organisation (WHO), for more than 6 months. This was the participants CPAL or chronic physical activity level. The participants were attached to an infrared spectroscopy that recorded the relative concentration of haemoglobin in their blood every second. They then underwent a reaction time test which tested their inhibiting and switching abilities. The results of the study showed that the

In my original experiment, “How much does exercise affect the brain?”, I used cardiovascular exercise to increase primarily the heart, to stimulate the brain. Off of this, I decided to change the

The purpose of the study by (Colcombe & Kramer, 2003) was to examine whether or not an aerobic fitness training enhances perceptual, cognitive and motor processes in healthy but inactive older adults. They discussed that through animal studies, researchers have found a positive correlation between aerobic

how exercising can also assist with building and conditioning the brain, as well as the

Exercise may be one of the most important influences on your overall health to date. While the only benefits that are mainly focused on are the physical benefits, significant psychological impacts can also be linked to exercise. Although some of these benefits aren’t viewed with much enthusiasm, studies have proven that exercise can actually improve one’s quality of life greatly by increasing not only their physical health but their mental health as well. It is because of this that exercise is a