Learning
requires more than the acquisition of unfamiliar knowledge; that new
information or know-how, if it’s to be more than ephemeral, must be
consolidated and securely stored in long-term memory.
Mental repetition
is one way to do that, of course. But mounting scientific evidence suggests
that what we do physically also plays an important role in this process. Sleep,
for instance, reinforces memory. And recent experiments show that when mice and
rats jog on running wheels after acquiring a new skill, they learn much better
than sedentary rodents do. Exercise seems to increase the production of
biochemicals in the body and brain related to mental function.
Researchers
at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior at Radboud
University in the Netherlands and the University of Edinburgh have begun to
explore this connection. For a study published this month in Current Biology,
72 healthy adult men and women spent about 40 minutes undergoing a standard
test of visual and spatial learning. They observed pictures on a computer
screen and then were asked to remember their locations.
Afterward,
the subjects all watched nature documentaries. Two-thirds of them also
exercised: Half were first put through interval training on exercise bicycles
for 35 minutes immediately after completing the test; the others did the same
workout four hours after the test.
Two days
later, everyone returned to the lab and repeated the original computerized test
while an M.R.I. machine scanned their brain activity.
Those who
exercised four hours after the test recognized and recreated the picture
locations most accurately. Their brain activity was subtly different, too,
showing a more consistent pattern of neural activity. The study’s authors
suggest that their brains might have been functioning more efficiently because
they had learned the patterns so fully. But why delaying exercise for four
hours was more effective than an immediate workout remains mysterious. By
contrast, rodents do better in many experiments if they work out right after
learning.
Eelco van
Dongen, the study’s lead author and a former researcher at Radboud University
(he is now a policy officer at the Netherlands Organization for Scientific
Research), hopes that future studies will help determine both the optimal time
to exercise and the ideal activity to reinforce learning. Workouts that are too
strenuous “could be less positive or even detrimental” to acquiring knowledge,
Dr. van Dongen says, while gentle exertions — “a short, slow walk,” he adds —
might not prompt enough of an increase in the biochemicals needed to influence
how the brain learns.
For now,
he says, if you are trying to memorize a PowerPoint narrative or teach yourself
macroeconomics, it could be beneficial to exercise a few hours after a study
session. “Long-term memory is not only influenced by what happens when you
learn new things,” he says, “but also by the processes that take place in the
hours and days afterward, when new information is stabilized and integrated in
your brain.”
Gretchen
Reynolds
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