Bringing the Brain Together Using Aerobics

A recent study has shown that people who conduct very little exercise, also known as “professional couch potatoes”, tend to have less brain activity. In your brain, everything works as a circuit. As we age they tend to get disconnected. The article states that one of the brain circuits, known as the Default Mode Network, controls the activity part of the brain when a person isn’t necessarily in reality, for example daydreaming. Researchers have discovered that the lack of activity in the Default Mode Network usually means that there is a disease approaching, Alzheimer’s, or just a normal sign of aging. With that said, the purpose of this experiment was to know, “the effects of fitness on connectivity of brain networks that show the most dysfunction with age,” says the article.

To conduct this experiment they recorded the results of two age groups. The first age group consisted of 65 adults, from ages 59-80 years old, whom joined a fitness group, such as a walking group and a stretching and toning group, for one year. The researchers also tested a group that consisted of 32 adults, from ages 18-35 years old. Before performing this experiment the article states, “All of the participants were sedentary before the study, reporting less than two episodes of physical activity lasting 30 minutes or more in the previous six months.” At the end of the experiment, the results were that the Default Mode Network in the older group that were doing the walking fitness had enhanced greatly, from the older group that did the stretching and toning fitness.

This article is important because it can show us how walking for 40 minutes, three times a day, can help keep our brain healthy as we age. Little details such as these can make a big difference in the future for everyone. Lastly, the article tells us that the higher the connectivity is the, the better we can plan, schedule, deal with our memory, and multitask, the skills that decrease as we age.

Source: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Attention, Couch Potatoes! Walking Boosts Brain Connectivity, Function." Science Daily 26 August 2010. 27 August 2010 .