How can exercise make our brains healthier
There have been numerous reports in recent years about the negative effects of exercise on the brains of athletes, but a study from northwestern university found that athletes in all sports had healthier brains than non-athletes without injury.
Author Nina Kraus said: 'exercise leads to better physical fitness, where participation in physical activity can modulate the brain to better understand a person's sensory environment.
In the study of about 1,000 participants, the author found that athletes had a higher ability to reduce background electrical noise in the brain, allowing them to better process external sounds.
The study was published on Dec. 9 in the journal Sports Health.
"Taking physical activity seriously seems to calm the nervous system," kraus says. Furthermore, if the nervous system is healthier, it may be better able to deal with injuries or other health problems." These findings may inspire people who struggle with auditory processing to engage in physical intervention. In particular, participating in sports can alleviate the excessive brain noise that often occurs in children in low-income areas, kraus said.
Kraus and her collaborators used earplugs to deliver speech syllables to participants and scalp electrodes to record brain activity.In addition, they analyzed the ratio of background noise to voice response by looking at the size of the sound response relative to the background noise.Studies have shown that athletes are more sensitive to sound than non-athletes.
Like athletes, musicians and multilingual people, kraus says, they have improved their ability to hear sounds.But the brains of musicians and multilinguals do this by turning up the sounds in their brains rather than turning down the background noise in their brains.
Author Nina Kraus said: 'exercise leads to better physical fitness, where participation in physical activity can modulate the brain to better understand a person's sensory environment.
In the study of about 1,000 participants, the author found that athletes had a higher ability to reduce background electrical noise in the brain, allowing them to better process external sounds.
The study was published on Dec. 9 in the journal Sports Health.
"Taking physical activity seriously seems to calm the nervous system," kraus says. Furthermore, if the nervous system is healthier, it may be better able to deal with injuries or other health problems." These findings may inspire people who struggle with auditory processing to engage in physical intervention. In particular, participating in sports can alleviate the excessive brain noise that often occurs in children in low-income areas, kraus said.
Kraus and her collaborators used earplugs to deliver speech syllables to participants and scalp electrodes to record brain activity.In addition, they analyzed the ratio of background noise to voice response by looking at the size of the sound response relative to the background noise.Studies have shown that athletes are more sensitive to sound than non-athletes.
Like athletes, musicians and multilingual people, kraus says, they have improved their ability to hear sounds.But the brains of musicians and multilinguals do this by turning up the sounds in their brains rather than turning down the background noise in their brains.
