More incentive to go to the gym?
Researchers at the Donders Institute in the Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands have suggested an interesting new trick to boost your memory — exercise four hours after learning something new.
In a new study, which has been reported in the journal Current Biology, 72 volunteers were recruited to take a 40-minute memory test in which they looked at 90 pictures of common objects located in one of six places on a computer screen. They had to try and remember what the object was and which position they saw it in.
Then, the participants were split into three groups — one group exercised immediately after the memory test, a second group exercised four hours later, and a third didn’t exercise at all. The workout was high-intensity interval training on a spinning bike for 35 minutes, at an intensity of up to 80 percent of the participants’ maximum heart rates.
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Two days later, all of the participants were asked to return and re-take the memory tests to see how much information their brains had retained. They retook the tests while undergoing MRI brain scans, allowing the researchers to analyze their brain activity patterns.
The researchers found that people who exercised four hours after their learning session retained the information better than those who exercised immediately after or not at all. Further, the brain scans showed a link between waiting four hours to exercise and more precise representations in the hippocampus — an important brain region involved in learning and memory — when an individual correctly answered a question.
“This finding could imply that the hippocampus is particularly sensitive to the acute effects of exercise and thus important in mediating its cognitive benefits,” the researchers wrote in the study.
However, there’s still much to learn about the memory consolidation process, and this study had its limitations. The researchers only tested the effects immediate exercise and exercise after a 4-hour window, so more research must be done to explore whether a 2-hour window or 6-hour window, for instance, may be a better memory booster.
The jury’s also still out on how exactly delayed exercise has this enhancing effect on memory, but the researchers say that earlier studies of lab animals suggest that naturally-occurring chemical compounds in the body, like dopamine and norepinephrine, can improve memory consolidation. Physical exercise is a proven way to boost these natural chemicals.
"Our results suggest that appropriately timed physical exercise can improve long-term memory and highlight the potential of exercise as an intervention in educational and clinical settings," the researchers concluded in a press release.
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