Motor activity strengthens the brain and prevents dementia but while walking helps maintain episodic memory, high-intensity exercises train spatial memory.
Not new news that regular exercise brings many health benefits. It protects against the development of chronic diseases such as diabetes or heart disease and in many cases can improve mental health. And not only that: numerous studies tell us that physical activity also strengthens the brain and prevents dementia (even if you start playing sports at an advanced age). We know that physically active boys between the ages of 15 and 18 tended to have larger hippocampal volume (associated with memory and spatial navigation) and the middle frontal gyrus, linked to the regulation of emotions and working memory. Over the years, numerous works have shown that structural changes of this type result in better cognitive performance and better academic results
But what effect does exercise have on specific functions like the memory
? Is it possible to choose a specific sports training that can help to remember what you ate for dinner last night, or the details of the first day of work or, more simply, where the car keys were put? It would seem so, even if the results of this recent study, re-proposed by the New York Times, are still preliminary and the mechanisms not yet clarified. The new work has in fact investigated how the intensity of the exercise plays an important role in strengthening the different types of memory.
Factors affecting memory
One of the problems that recur in studying the link between regular exercise and memory is that i changes are difficult to measure. There are in fact numerous factors that influence memory, such as sedentary work in the office o to chronic sleep deprivation. In addition, there are different types of memory, which may explain how a person may often lose keys (poor spatial memory) but have a great talent for remembering dates of birth (strong semantic memory).
The help of fitness trackers
Fitness trackers can partially solve this problem. In a recent article published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, researchers looked at fitness tracker data from 113 volunteers who also completed a series of memory tests such as remembering story details, word lists, new linguistic terms and spatial details. The advantage of this method was having linked a full year of information on the activities of the participants (how much exercise they did, how intense and how often) their performance in memory tests. Other studies measure activity level through self-reported questionnaire data, which is less reliable than fitness tracker data because people tend to underestimate how sedentary they are and how badly they remember their physical activity levels.
Physically active people have better memories
In the recent study conducted by researchers from Dartmouth College in Hanover (United States), led by Professor Jeremy Manningit was discovered as physically active people generally had better memory than sedentary ones. The researchers also noted how the types of memory tests they performed best on varied according to the intensity of the exercise.
Moderate activities improve episodic memory
Participants engaged in amild and moderate activity they had one better episodic memory, that is, a greater ability to remember a fact and at the same time when and where it happened. The figure follows what has already been shown in previous studies that have shown that the more active people are, the better, on average, their episodic memory.
High-intensity activities improve spatial memory
Volunteers who regularly exercised intensely, for example by running or with a HIIT workout (High Intensity Interval Training) have obtained better results in spatial memory tasks, that is, the ability to remember the physical relationships between objects placed in spaces, for example remembering where the car keys were placed or where the car was parked. Also in this case the result confirms what has already emerged in other works, and that high intensity exercise improves memory. This study, however, goes further: it would appear that high-intensity training is more useful for maintaining good levels of spatial memory.
However, further studies will be needed to confirm these associations and understand the il because certain exercises can affect specific types of memory. Maybe someday, who knows, specific training will be available to remember where the car was parked or where the house keys were put.
October 14, 2022 (change October 14, 2022 | 17:18)
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