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Learning is Better With Mild Exercise

Exercise helps you to learn

Exercise Helps You Learn!

It’s no secret that exercise and fitness transforms our cognitive function, influencing memory, mood and attention span. We have demonstrated this fact in a previous article ‘the Science of Exercise for Cognition’. In this article Dr. John J. Ratey, MD, argues that students can increase test scores by 15% with a daily bout of intense physical activity. His video explains that physical activity helps you to learn and is also a treatment for anxiety, attention deficit, hyper activity and depression. But did you know that if you perform mild exercise during learning, it is proven to be the best time to memorize?

Students Can Increase Test Scores With Daily Intense Physical Activity

Research published in PloS One provided evidence that mild activity, in this case done on a stationary bike, while learning new vocabulary, provides significant exercise-induced memory improvement as tested by a paragraph recall. The study investigated the shortcomings and whether timing at various intensities will interact to affect memory formation.

Low Intensity For Best Results

The scientists learned when it comes to memory, performing mild physical activity during learning is significantly more effective than exercising beforehand or no exercise at all. To get the best results practice at a low intensity. This  primes the brain to welcome new information and adding it into memories.

The beneficial memory impact depended on the mildness of the workout, as in this case gentle cycling. But in contrast, a different study presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine writes, that when the exercise is practiced at a more intense level, the body and brain overstimulates. Thus occupying more of the brain’s attention resources and leaving little room for memories.

Facets of Learning and Memory

This short video below expands in detail on most facets of learning and memory.

Ref: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0064172