by Cristina Marrone
Motor activity strengthens the brain and prevents dementia, but while walking helps preserve episodic memory, high-intensity exercise trains spatial memory.
It’s no new news that regular exercise has many health benefits. It protects against the development of chronic diseases such as diabetes or heart disease and can improve mental health in many cases. And that’s not all: numerous studies show that physical activity also strengthens the brain and prevents dementia (even if you only start exercising at an advanced age). We know that physically active boys between the ages of 15 and 18 tend to have larger volumes in the hippocampus (linked to memory and spatial navigation) and the median frontal gyrus, which is linked to emotion regulation and working memory. Numerous studies over the years have shown that structural changes of this type lead to better cognitive performance and academic outcomes
But how does exercise affect certain functions like memory? Is it possible to choose a specific exercise workout that can help remember what you had for dinner last night, or the details of the first day at work, or, more simply, where the car keys were left? It seems so, although the results of this study, recently re-proposed by the New York Times, are still preliminary and the mechanisms have not yet been elucidated. Indeed, the new work examined how the intensity of exercise plays an important role in strengthening different types of memory.
Factors affecting memory
One of the problems that recurs when studying the link between regular exercise and memory is that changes are difficult to measure. In fact, there are many factors that affect memory, such as: B. sedentary office work or chronic sleep deprivation. In addition, there are different types of memory that can explain why a person often loses keys (poor spatial memory) but has a great talent for remembering dates of birth (strong semantic memory).
The help of fitness trackers
Fitness trackers can partially solve this problem. In a recent article published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, the researchers examined fitness tracker data from 113 volunteers who also completed a battery of memory tests such as: B. remembering story details, word lists, new linguistic terms and spatial details. The advantage of this method was that they linked information about participants’ activities (how much exercise, how intensely, and how often) to their performance on memory tests over an entire year. Other studies measure activity levels through self-reported questionnaire data, which is less reliable than fitness tracker data because people tend to underestimate how sedentary they are and how poorly they remember their physical activity levels.
Physically active people have better memories
A recent study by researchers from Dartmouth College in Hanover (USA), led by Professor Jeremy Manning, found that physically active people generally have better memories than sedentary people. The researchers also found that the types of memory tests they performed best on changed depending on the intensity of the exercise.
Moderate activity improves episodic memory
Participants who engaged in light and moderate activities had better episodic memory, that is, a greater ability to remember a fact and at the same time when and where it happened. The figure follows what has been shown in previous studies, which have shown that the more active people are, the better their episodic memory, on average.
High-intensity activities improve spatial memory
Volunteers who regularly engaged in vigorous physical activity, such as running or high-intensity interval training (HIIT), performed better on spatial memory tasks, which is the ability to recall physical relationships between objects placed in spaces, such as remembering where the car keys were left or where the car was parked. Also in this case the result confirms what has already appeared in other work and that high-intensity training improves memory. However, this study goes even further: it seems that high-intensity exercise is more useful for maintaining good spatial memory.
However, more studies are needed to confirm these associations and to understand why certain exercises can affect certain types of memory. Maybe one day, who knows, there will be special training to remember where the car was parked or where the house keys were left.
October 14, 2022 (change October 14, 2022 | 17:18)
© REPRODUCTION RESERVED