The value of games-related training of the mind, may be hypothetical - so answer the question of how to make yourself smarter in his article Dan Hurley, but there is another, easy to reach , scientifically proven way to make yourself smarter. Walk or swim. For more than ten years, experts in the neurosciences and psychophysiology accumulated empirical evidence significant association between exercise and cognitive (intellectual) abilities. But the latest research results make it clear that this is not just any relationship, but a clear relationship. using sophisticated technology to test the operation of individual neurons - and to build up brain matter - scientists in recent months have discovered that exercise, apparently build a brain that resists physical reduction and increases cognitive flexibility. Exercise, as suggested by recent data considered neuroscience do more to support the (stimulation) thinking than does the thinking itself. most convincing evidence comes from several new studies of laboratory animals, living in full of stimulating cells. It has long been known that the so-called "enriched" environment - at home, filled with toys and exciting, original proposals - lead to improved mental abilities of laboratory animals. In most cases, these include sredovye enrichment and "squirrel" wheel, so that mice and rats love to run at all. That was until recently, when a small study was conducted to determine the effects of individual running and playing with new toys or other exciting pursuits of the mind that do not increase the heart rate. Thus, last year, a team of researchers led by Justin S.Rhodes, professor of psychology at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois, has joined the mice in four groups and put them in the four types of different living conditions. One group lived in the world of sense of taste and wealth, dining forest nuts, fruit and cheese, and sometimes their food sprinkled with cinnamon, washed all her different-smelling water. Their "bed" was a multi-colored plastic cups occupying the corner of the cage. Balls neon colors, plastic tunnels, cubes nibble, mirrors and swings filled with different parts of the cell. Group 2 had access to all the same enjoyment plus they had a small disc-shaped "squirrel" wheel (for running). In the cell, the third group did not have any decorations and entertainment, and these mice were fed a standard, simple food. The houses of the fourth group contained wheels for racing, but any more toys or fun (entertainment). All animals have been a series of cognitive tests at baseline, and they had taken an injection of brain matter, which allows scientists to track changes in their brain structures. Then they run, play, or if the medium was depleted, lay in their cages. The observations were made in a few months. Rhodes'a Then the team placed the mice back in the same series of cognitive tests and check the status of brain tissue. It turned out that the toys and tastes, regardless of the type of stimulation did not improve the brain of animals. "Only one thing matters," - said Rhodes, - «if they had the running wheel." The animals are trained, whether they had other things to do in cages or not, was a healthy brain, and they showed significantly better in cognitive tests than the other mice. Animals that did not run, no matter how rich their world was, not improved their results in complex thinking skills, extensive studies, in which the team Rhodes'a. "They like toys," - said Rhodes, and mice rarely sat in the empty, quiet parts of their cells. But despite the fact that they too are trained, they do not become smarter. Why exercise form mental abilities as thinking can not? The brain, like all the muscles and organs - is a fabric and its function deteriorates at low levels of use and age. Since the second half of our third decade, most of us lose annually about 1 percent of the volume of the hippocampus, a key part of the brain associated with memory and certain types of learning. Exercises with this, it seems to slow down or turn back the natural fading of the brain as it does with muscles. Although scientists thought until recently that people were born with a certain number of nerve cells, and it is impossible to generate more, now they know better. In 1990, using the technique of cells labeling newborn cells, the researchers determined through autopsies that the adult human brain contains a number of new neurons. New cells are particularly prevalent in the hippocampus, indicating that neurogenesis - or the creation of new brain cells - first came here. Even more inspiring, the researchers found that exercise trigger neurogenesis. Mice and rats, which ran for several weeks, were generally two times more new neurons in their hippocampus than the sedentary animals. Their brain, like other muscles, "gaining weight." But it was an indescribable effect - exercise had advantages in the operation of the newly formed neurons - it was the most amazing. Brain cells can improve the intelligence, unless they join the existing work of neural networks, and many do not, but instead creating a pointless chatter about himself in the brain for a long time until his death. only way to build the neurons in the neural network, however - it is something to learn. In a study of 2007 new brain cells of mice created loops in neural networks of these animals, if mice learned to navigate in the water maze, the quest is cognitive, not physically difficult. But these brain cells were very limited in what they can do. When, after the researchers studied brain activity, they found that the new linked, bound cells light up (activate), only when the animals navigate the maze again, not at the time when they were practiced in other cognitive tasks. Skills, recorded in these cells were not transferred to other kinds of thinking rodents. On the other hand, exercise seems to make neurons mobile. When researchers in a separate study, mice were forced to run, the brain of these animals readily binds many new neurons in the neural network. But these neurons do not only intensified later in the run. They also light up when the animals used cognitive skills, such as the study of an unfamiliar environment. In mice running, as opposed to learning, creating brain cells, which may be multi-tasking. Exactly how exercise redesigning mental capacity at the molecular level is not completely clear, but research suggests that exercise helps to increase something called neurotrophic factor in the brain ( brain-derived neurotropic factor), or BDNF, - a substance that increases the cells and axons, protects the connections between neurons and causes neurogenesis. Scientists can not examine these indirect effects on the human brain, but they found that after training most people increases BDNF levels in their blood. Few researchers think that more BDNF explains all the brain changes associated with exercise. The complete process is almost always involves multiple complex biochemical and genetic pathway. The latest study of the brain of older mice, for example, has found 117 genes that were expressed (developing) differently in the brains of animals, started a program to run, compared with those who remained inactive, and researchers looked only at a small portion of the set of genes that could be expressed differently in the brain due to exercise. What type of exercise produces these desired effect - it's a different and intriguing unanswered question for study. "It is not clear whether the activity be endurance exercise," - said a psychologist and specialist in neurosciences Arthur F. Kramer, director of the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois and an outstanding expert in uprazheny and brain. A limited number of studies over the past few years have found cognitive benefits in older people, who were engaged in weightlifting (forwarded different weight) during the year and various other exercises. But much of the research at the moment and all animal experiments include running and other aerobic exercise. Whatever the activity, from the most recent research the idea that exercise does not have to be debilitating to be effective for the brain. When a group of 120 elderly men and women instruct on walking and stretching to a large study in 2011, those who went on foot to the end of the study, in a year, grew the size of the hippocampus. At that time, those who engaged in the stretch marks, lost in its entirety in accordance with the normal atrophy. Besides, who walked showed better results in terms of BDNF in their blood than the stretching group, and they were better cognitive tests. As a result, the researchers concluded that those who went on foot, was restored to his youth hippocampus 2 years and more. 65-year-olds reached level 63, simply by walking, which is an inspiring news for anyone worried that we all face in our later years to the life of a slow (or not so slowly) mental decline.
Source : An article in the New York Times.
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