Research On How Exercise Impacts Neuroplasticity

Research has proven that physical activity improves cognitive function and can also improve brain function throughout a lifespan. Moreover, staying physically active has so many benefits as well. For example, doing exercise and fitness activities help build cells and natural pathways to help reduce changes in memory loss or dementia. Also, it has so many health benefits including long-term improvements to the cognitive function as the young adult reaching mid

In the book Spark, written by Dr. John J. Ratey, he discusses how exercise can positively affect how your brain works. He provides studies and personal experiences to support the claims he makes. I always knew exercise would improve your life but never could have imagined how much it can affect your brain health as well. The chapter I thought spoke the most to me was chapter two, Learning: Grow Your Brain Cells.

The concept of neuroplasticity has long been questioned. The term of “neuroplasticity” did not even come about until the mid-late 20th century. When the term “plastic” was used to describe the brain by a select few neuroscientists, they were laughed at and the term was never thought of as a description for the human brain. The human brain was seen as a closed circuit and one that once you had it, you definitely had it. Scientists thought the brain would not develop anymore past a certain point in your life. Norman Doidge brings the concept of neuroplasticity into reality in his book “The Brain that Changes Itself,” a book about the triumphs in the frontier of brain science.

Neuroplasticity helps the brain to recover from injury. When a brain activity associated to a given function is hurt, neuroplasticity helps the brain to transfer it to a different location in the brain. Also, Norman Doidge wrote a book about this experience. His book is “The Brain that changes itself: Stories of a Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Sciences”. In his book Norman Doidge gives examples of people who recovered from brain injury. They have begun to use the functions of their brain and move their body members.

I’m going to be talking about something that kind of helps reorganize some paths in your brain in many ways, it’s called neuroplasticity, which can also be called brain plasticity, In which it gives the brain the ability to adapt and modify itself. In other words, reorganize its self.

There is ample evidence to demonstrate that through the normal ageing process alterations to the brain in structure and function are directly related to cognitive changes (Glisky, 2007). With an increasing ageing population strategies for prevention of disease and age related cognitive decline are necessary to improve quality of life and reduce the associated healthcare costs (Australian Government Productivity Commission [AGPC], 2013). Physical exercise is known to be crucial in maintaining physiological health; it can also be used as a means of neuroprotection and assist in modifiable risk factors for improved brain health and subsequent cognitive function. This review will critically analyse current research into the effects of exercise

Elly Nedivi, an Associate Professor of Neurobiology at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, with the help of her colleagues, discovered that a certain type of brain cell can remodel lost connections, or neural pathways. Previously, researchers had found large-scale changes in dendrite-length, but more importantly, they found that this dendrite growth was limited to a specific type of cell: the interneuron. The cortical neurons they studied shoThe Adult Brain Neurons Can Remodel Connections

Neuroplasty is The ability of the brain to adapt, to create workarounds and short cuts to make up for missing or damaged portions of the brain. It is amazing how the brain can grow new networks and nueral connections till the day we die. Our little brain cells oe neurons compensate for or imjuries ,diseases or birth defects. OUr brain adapts for and redesigns its self to accomplish normal tasks, Sometime by retraining but sometimes just natural. Our brain is more less plastic. So our brains are capable of re-engineering themselves. However there are limites based on the amount of damage and which parts are damaged, But overall our brains are pretty hardy.(MedicineNet.n.d.).

Human physical activity occurs in different ways and varies in intensity and duration. Several methods have been used to investigate the effects of physical activity in humans. Studies of this type are vital because direct measures provide a means to examine a cause and effect relationship between PA and neuroplasticity substrates. Accordingly, several investigations that aim to determine the neurobiological, psychological, and physiological effects of PA on humans. Physical activity produces anti-depressant effects and improves cognitive function, enhances quality of life, improves sleep, optimizes brain-derived neurotrophic factor(BDNF)levels and function in the hippocampus,and enhances fitness measures. (Phillips

The trial results are in line with the author’s hypothesis. The experimental group who completed six month exercise regime showed a significant reduction in neuropsychiatric disturbances. Whilst in the control group showed functional and neuropsychiatric deterioration and these disturbances marginally increased.

Imagine a small tree sapling, that begins to sprout from the ground. This sapling continues to grow and becomes a tall, sturdy, young tree which many long limbs and branches shoot out from like wires. This tree continues to thrive, until it reaches its older ages and it wears down like an unused muscle. Those long branches and limbs start to weaken and eventually fall as the tree dies. Now, you may not realize, but this tree is exactly like your brain.

Although for many years scientist have shown that the brains of young children have plasticity (i.e. the ability to change and grow?), they believed that once this critical period had passed, the brain structures were pretty much fixed and that if one part was damaged, the function of that part would be lost..

In modern research scientists, educators, nutritionists, psychiatrists, and geneticists are constantly working together to find out how the mind-body connection affects learning. Scientists are researching how our ability to generate new brain cells affects our abilities to learn. Research has shown that our brain develops new brain cells every day. This continues until we die. According to Palombo-Weiss, R. (1997), “it's our ability to generate new brain cells that accounts for the brain's plasticity-its ability to continue to learn and update its database. Scientists generally agree that each human being has approximately 100 billion neurons, each of

One of the most well-known facts in the field of health and psychology is that physical fitness indeed increases one’s mental activity and increases mental fitness. This fact has been proved through decades worth of careful and dedicated research on the “mind-body” connection that exists in human beings. However, while this might be an accepted fact, scholars these days are still being surprised with new discoveries, including how exercising affects the brain and how do these “benefits” happen to be. Perhaps one of the most common misconceptions about the brain is that it is a ‘muscle’ (Edlund, 2013). However, basic anatomy would show that despite containing a little bit of muscle, the brain is mostly composed of white and grey matters, which are responsible for the transmission of electrical impulses through a series of chemical reactions. From these series of transmissions, the electrical impulses become responsible for information transmission throughout the whole body (Godman, 2014). However, one of the more apparent differences here is that while muscle develops through physical exertion, the brain does not. And, being a well-known fact, this led to many people thinking that in order to improve one’s mental well-being, the best thing to do is to read books, engage in puzzles, and do things that would directly affect your brain. While this would certainly be beneficial, plenty of other factors (biological and psychological) could affect an individual’s perception and

The Erikson et al. article supports the idea that physical exercise helps the brain by improving memory and the size of the hippocampus. Erikson and his colleagues suggested in their study that physical exercise increases the retention of information and improves learning capabilities. The way they measured this was by studying the increased or decreased size of the subject’s hippocampus and levels of BDNF. The control group in this experiment completed stretching/toning exercises while the experimental group did aerobic exercise; the experimental group ended up having a larger hippocampus volume than when starting out, as well as higher levels of BDNF; the