Developing and providing impactful cognitive growth starts in utero. We have all read the research supporting the importance of moms to eat healthy foods, to exercise, to play music and to read to your baby while expecting. There is also research on how exercise may affect a child’s brain as they develop and age. Please enjoy an excerpt from the article below by Gretchen Reynolds titled “The Fittest Brains.” After reading their findings, even with this bitter cold weather on the East Coast, you will want to get your child outside and exercising!
In an experiment published last month, researchers recruited schoolchildren, ages 9 and 10, who lived near the Champaign-Urbana campus of the University of Illinois and asked them to run on a treadmill. The researchers were hoping to learn more about how fitness affects the immature human brain. Animal studies had already established that, when given access to running wheels, baby rodents bulked up their brains, enlarging certain areas and subsequently outperforming sedentary pups on rodent intelligence tests. But studies of the effect of exercise on the actual shape and function of children’s brains had not yet been tried. So the researchers sorted the children, based on their treadmill runs, into highest-, lowest-, and median-fit categories. Only the most-and least-fit groups continued in the study (to provide the greatest contrast). Both groups completed a series of cognitive challenges involving watching directional arrows on a computer screen and pushing certain keys in order to test how well the children filter out unnecessary information and attend to relevant cues. Finally, the children’s brains were scanned, using magnetic resonance imaging technology to measure the volume of specific areas. Previous studies found that fitter kids generally scored better on such tests. And in this case, too, those children performed better on the tests. But the M.R.I.’s provided a clearer picture of how it might work. They showed that fit children had significantly larger basal ganglia, a key part of the brain that aids in maintaining attention and “executive control,” or the ability to coordinate actions and thoughts crisply. Since both groups of children had similar socioeconomic backgrounds, body mass index and other variables, the researchers concluded that being fit had enlarged that portion of their brains. Meanwhile, in a separate, newly completed study by many of the same researchers at the University of Illinois, a second group of 9-and 10-year old children were also categorized by fitness levels and had their brains scanned, but they completed different tests, this time focusing on complex memory. Such thinking is associated with activity in the hippocampus, a structure in the brain’s medial temporal lobes. Sure enough, the M.R.I. scans revealed that the fittest children had heftier hippocampi. The two studies did not directly overlap, but the researchers, in their separate reports, noted that the hippocampus and basal ganglia regions interact in the human brain, structurally and functionally. Together they allow some of the most intricate thinking. If exercise is responsible for increasing the size of these regions and strengthening the connection between them, being fit in young people may “enhance neurocognition,” the authors concluded.
The exciting news is much more brain research is taking place across the United States and abroad. Scanning and imagery testing have become more frequent and advanced providing impactful data to doctors and scientists alike. The more we learn about how a child’s brain develops the more we can do to promote strong growth in their cognitive abilities. So let’s get our kids walking, going to great gym classes at school and moving to have fun. It is all about that hippocampus development!
Have a good week at school. Time for a walk!
Laine