Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Walking & Memory

Henry David Thoreau was right all long - here:

"A recent study shows that aerobic exercise—in particular, walking—can actually increase the size of the part of the brain responsible for memory.
The study got 60 sedentary adults aged 60 to 80 to start a brisk walking program of 40 minutes a day three times a week. After a year, MRIs showed the hippocampus region of these exercisers had increased by about 2%. The walkers also had better performance on memory tests, compared to their scores at the start of the study—an improvement associated with the larger hippocampus.
It seems that brisk walking or moderate aerobic exercise is better than just any activity: the hippocampus brain region for a control group of participants who instead did stretching and toning exercises decreased in volume by 1.4%."

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