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 Newly-learned information turns into long-term knowledge through a
process of stabilization and integration of memories, the study team
writes in Current Biology. This requires certain brain chemicals
that are also released during physical exercise, including dopamine,
noradrenaline (norepinephrine) and a growth factor called BDNF, they
explain.
“The brain processes new memories for a while after learning.
Physical exercise is able to improve these post-learning processes,”
senior author Guillen Fernandez, director of the Donders Institute
for Brain, Cognition, and Behavior in Nijmegen, the Netherlands,
told Reuters Health by email.
To explore when exercise would most improve learning, researchers
recruited 72 participants and tasked them with learning to match a
series of 90 locations with pictures over a 40-minute period.
The participants were split into three groups: one group exercised
immediately after learning, one group exercised four hours later and
one group did not exercise at all.
The exercise groups did interval training for 35 minutes on a
stationary bike, including spurts at maximum intensity.
Two days later, the participants returned to the lab to test how
much of what they’d memorized they could recall. During the recall
test, the each subject was in a MRI scanner so researchers could
monitor activity in different areas of the brain.
The group that had exercised four hours after learning remembered
significantly more information on the follow-up test, while the
immediate-exercise group did no better than the group that did not
exercise.
Activity in the hippocampus, a part of the brain associated with
forming memories, was very similar among people in the
delayed-exercise group during the recall task, but less consistent
in the other participants, the researchers note.
They speculate that the consistency of activation in the hippocampus
in the delayed-exercise group could indicate greater “efficiency or
coherence” in the way the brain pulls up the memory and “might
relate to differences in memory strength.”
While strong memories will be remembered no matter what, Fernandez
said, weaker memories that would normally be forgotten within a day
may last longer if the brain releases more dopamine and
norepinephrine.
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People looking to improve their learning should perform fairly
intense exercise to make sure that enough of the critical brain
chemicals are released, he said, but cautioned against taking this
too far. “Very intensive exercise might also have negative effects.”
The authors note that more research is needed to determine if
exercise will help memories last beyond the two-day period they
studied.
They add that the type of memory may be important, and that
procedural or “body” memory of activities like tying a shoe may be
better helped by immediate exercise than other kinds of memories.
Having a regular exercise routine may be helpful as well said Marc
Roig, an assistant professor at McGill University in Montreal who
studies the effect of cardiovascular exercise on memory.
Several weeks of cardio exercise, such as jogging, can make the
hippocampus larger and improve people’s memory, he told Reuters
Health.
The type of exercise may not be important, though, added Roig, who
was not involved in the new study. “Most studies have looked into
aerobic exercise but recent data shows that resistance training and
high intensity interval training may also be beneficial.”
“When thinking about how to maximize your training regimen to
improve/maintain memory do not ask yourself only what type of
exercise, intensity or frequency is the best. Ask yourself when to
train to achieve the best results,” Roig said.
SOURCE: bit.ly/1OsVDu4 Current Biology, June 16, 2016.
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