How Running Jogs Your Memory by Creating New Brain Cells

     

We all know running is good for your body.

But it can also do wonders for the mind, according to Cambridge University scientists

A regular jog leads to the growth of new cells in the area of the brain which boosts your memory, a study has found.

It is not clear why aerobic exercise triggers the growth of grey matter (known as neurogenesis) but it may be linked to increased blood flow or higher levels of hormones that are released while exercising.

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Timothy Bussey a behavioural neuroscientist at Cambridge and a senior author on the study said the team studied two groups of mice, one which had umlimited access to a running wheel while the other did not.

After a few days left alone, they put both groups of mice through a series of memory tests on a computer screen. It displayed two identical squares side by side, and if they nudged the one on the left with their nose they received a sugar pellet reward, while the one on the right yielded nothing.

The mice who had been running were almost twice as successful as those in the control group at picking the correct square.

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At the start of the test, the squares were 30cm apart, but got closer and closer together until they were almost touching.

This part of the experiment was designed to test how good the mice were at separating two very similar memories. The human equivalent could be remembering what a person had for dinner yesterday and the day before, or where they parked on different trips to the supermarket.

The greatest improvement was seen in the later stages of the experiment, when the two squares were so close they nearly touched, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The sedentary mice got steadily worse at the test because their memories became too similar to separate.

M Bussey told the Guardian: ‘At this stage of the experiment, the two memories the mice are forming of the squares are very similar. It is when they have to distinguish between the two that these new brain cells really make a difference.’

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January 21, 2010