Exercise can improve brain function.
There was a time when people who could exercise were said to be incapable of studying because of the lack of understanding of exercise.
Perhaps this is why physical education has been neglected in comparison to other subjects.
However, recent research in brain science has revealed that this is a big mistake. In fact, exercise improves brain function.
The most common brain functions that improve with exercise are called higher functions. These functions are carried out by the prefrontal cortex.
Specifically, they include the following
・Deciding how to allocate time for work
・Making plans
・Short-term memory
・Working on several tasks simultaneously
・Making decisions even under ambiguous conditions
These include many functions that may be useful in both work and private life.
It is said that these higher functions are jumped up by about 7 times by exercising.
In addition to this, the speed at which you can get things done increases by about three times.
These effects of exercise are effective not only for healthy people, but also for people with Alzheimer’s disease and other cognitive decline in old age.
Furthermore, the mechanism by which exercise improves brain function has also been clarified.
Studies have shown that people who exercise regularly have a 2% larger hippocampus and actually have better memory.
It was also found that a brain substance called BDNF, which makes brain cells grow, is secreted in higher amounts when people exercise.
The more BDNF, the more brain cells proliferate and the larger the hippocampus becomes.
Also, when people who have never exercised before start exercising, they start to see a difference in the size of their hippocampus after only seven weeks.
If you look at the differences found on a cellular level, you can see that quite a large change has occurred.
The exercise here is about 10 minutes of aerobic walking at a brisk pace.
As your body gets used to it, you can gradually increase the amount of exercise each week.
Even a small amount of aerobic exercise will increase brain activity and improve memory.
In addition, the latest brain science has shown that continued exercise has quite a positive effect on the brain, such as preventing amnesia and increasing the number of brain cells that have been reduced by excessive alcohol consumption.
In fact, it is said that half of the brain training time of the world’s memory champions is spent on aerobic exercise.
People who exercise are mentally strong.
We don’t want to make mistakes if we can help it, but we all make mistakes at some point.
When you make a mistake, what do you do?
Some people dwell on it, while others don’t mind it at all.
On the other hand, there are those who use their mistakes as an opportunity to think positively about how to make things better.
These things can be taken as a part of a person’s personality, so it is easy to think, “Isn’t this something I was born with? But in fact, there is more to it than that.
There was a research study on how people who exercise and people who don’t exercise at all react when they make a mistake.
Of course, just what you say and do at the time can make you look better temporarily, so this is a direct look at how your brain reacts by measuring brain waves.
When a person makes a mistake, special brain waves are produced.
One is when we think, “Oh no! and it is the brain wave of depressed emotion (ERN).
The other is a positive brain wave ( PO ) that says, “I’ll do better next time! The other is the positive brain wave (PO).
People who usually exercise tend to have weaker ERNs and stronger POs.
In other words, when they make a mistake due to exercise, they tend to feel less depressed and more motivated to improve.
On the other hand, people who do not exercise tend to have strong depressive brain waves and weak positive brain waves.
When they make a mistake, they tend to focus more on worrying and less on trying to improve, which may cause them to repeat the same mistake.
This kind of brain science research shows that people who exercise regularly tend to be more positive and have a stronger desire to improve.
If you’ve read this far and think that you’re a person who dwells on things, perhaps you’re not exercising enough.
An important point to remember is that you can change whether you are positive or negative when you make a mistake by training.
That training is actually aerobic exercise.
There is nothing better than taking a little time out of your day to exercise to improve your brain function and get your work done.
If you haven’t done aerobic exercise in the past, why not make it a habit starting today?
