Fitness and MemoryFitness and MemoryThe effects of being in good physical health are proving more convincingly to expand beyond the obvious physiological benefits. Research has shown that a higher level of physical fitness can improve a person’s mood, psychophysiological responses to stress, improve self-esteem, and increase psychomotor speed (Blumenthal & Madden, 1988). There is increasing evidence to suggest that physical fitness level may be associated with certain aspects of cognitive functioning as well. Weingarten (1973) found that after a 12 week exercise program college students completing a battery of mental tests showed a significant correlation between increased physical fitness and improvement on tests in the areas of verbal comprehension, visual pursuit, verbal reasoning and symbolic reasoning. Another study in which participants completed a multiplication task immediately following 12 minutes of vigorous exercise indicated that individuals who are more physically fit may be better able to “resist the detrimental effects of physical effort” than are individuals who are less fit (Tomporowski & Ellis, 1986).
The field of neuropsychology has recently provided a great deal of information regarding the relationship between cognitive functioning and physical fitness. Research on the aging brain in animals has found that fMRI results show an increase in activity in areas of the pre-frontal and frontal regions of the brain in response to increased physical fitness via aerobic exercise (Kramer, Hahn, Cohen, Banich, McAuley, Harrison, et al., 1999) A recent study conducted by Colcombe, Kramer, Erickson, Scalf, McAuley, Cohen, et al. (2004) was one of the first to document these same results with human participants. The frontal and pre-frontal cortices are associated with central executive functions such as planning, organization, and working memory. These regions of the brain, which seem to be highly sensitive to physical fitness level, are of particular interest
The neural basis of fitness is thought to play a large part in the development of a wide range of behavioral and cognitive abilities. Individuals with an enhanced understanding of sports-playing and/or physical fitness as indicators of their cognitive skills are able to become better athletes. However, a lack of knowledge of how physical fitness in humans actually contributes to these abilities is well established and one that should not be underestimated. Some physiological and biochemical explanations of the neuropsychiatric differences in performance are available, but the main question remains why is a small proportion of the variation in brain function among certain sports and fitness types such as weightlifting so significant. A key to understanding this is to understand the brain and the fitness of different sports.
Cognitively Proficient Athletes
The most common form of mental fitness a person can perform are the primary mental tasks requiring focus, concentration, and coordination. Individuals with a lack of attentional coordination can be classified as having low motivation to perform these tasks. The only exception to this is when working out, while people who lack all of the basic mental tasks may have poor motivation to solve their mental puzzles. Individuals who are at high risk for developing a low motivation to perform these tasks have the lowest motivation to be able to maintain the tasks. These people also do not have good motivation to do the tasks correctly and in this case, they may be unable to get to the point where they can perform the difficult tasks needed to be performed. In short, these individuals do not actually have an increased ability to perform the tasks or to perform them correctly. These individuals are often referred to as ‘high effort’ and this description is usually used when the performance of the high-level tasks is being tested.
Intelligence
Many of the studies to date have used two different measures of intelligence such as a measure of perceived abilities to understand information (such as the ‘Knowledge Focused’ measure) and a measure of information processing abilities (eg. the ‘Know Language’ or the ‘Language Fluency’ measure). These three measures have been found to be strongly linked after controlled conditions have been evaluated. Using a simple measure of ‘knowledge focused’ we obtained an IQ score of 24 and a sensitivity level of 37, which includes the ability to discriminate between multiple possible responses in an extremely complex task (similar to the ability to detect false positive’s). We also calculated an IQ score of 30 and a sensitivity level of 29, which includes the ability to discriminate between multiple possible responses to both a complex and a non-complex stimulus. As you can see from these data, the ability to detect false negatives is highly significant.
Brain Function Among The Average Sports-Posing Sport-Posing Individuals
For the average sports-playing player, as I demonstrated in previous chapters, the training and conditioning of his competitive efforts for high-level competitive activity is extremely important. A person who concentrates on all activities at the same time and to that extent is also able to perform the most difficult (usually lower), non-competitive (usually higher) repetitive tasks at the same time. This may explain why the person with the lowest IQ scores (24 and 33) is being ranked very high in the elite ratings listed in this chapter.
To see why IQ may have an influence on athletic performance, consider the effect of body weight on the size of the glutes and the ability to run at more strenuous loads. However, the biggest change that occurs to a person’s athletic performance is increased resistance activity during the day. As is often the case when running, resistance acts as a training stimulus and the faster the individual is training, the less physical activity their body will do when doing the same activities at the same time. If this were to occur in some people they would be able to achieve a full 30 minutes more per day in strength and conditioning-training than if they were not. Therefore, a large part of the increased resistance activity seen with heavy and low physical activity training occurs not only during the week, but also after the exercise.
However, the amount of resistance activity seen during the day is also influenced by muscle power
How does a sports-playing individual respond to physical fitness? Sports-playing individuals are extremely successful. While their general physical fitness may be extremely low, their physical fitness may be high (I.J., Hahn, Cohen, Davis, & I.J., 2003). One of the strongest cognitive functions in a sport-playing individual, however, is that of planning and working memory (Berman, 2002). This ability may play an important role in sports-playing abilities. One of the first studies that reported this cognitive ability of sports-playing individuals consisted of a 10-minute marathon exercise with no preparation for the final task. It was found that the endurance training (i.e., marathon) individuals performed significantly better on both sprinting and marathon tasks compared with those who did not participate in the endurance group. These results suggest that aerobic exercise should be considered as an alternative method for fitness enhancement and that physical fitness can improve the general fitness of the fitness group.
The study of this study also involved the use of an experimental animal model to investigate the cognitive and physiological changes associated with each one of the endurance and marathon task. In another experiment, we also showed that the endurance trained individuals performed as well on two aerobic exercise protocols, one that was specific to one type of exercise but in addition to the two types of exercise. The latter two endurance training protocols employed a set of four aerobic exercise protocols (i.e., 15–30 h rest for three to four minutes before, 8 h rest for one to two hours) with aerobic exercise (i.e., a set of eight cycling routes to perform six in one set, plus 10 minutes of slow-running and run training for at least two hours before each session) (Schells, & McMenamin, 2004). These protocols have been validated by the results of a meta-, multi-national meta-analysis (Liu et al., 2006). This research has provided information on potential underlying factors that may be associated with aerobic exercise performance, including:
A higher proportion of the brain is devoted to physical fitness as assessed by a small number of tests in the form of strength, torque-type, and torque-motor function tests. However, physical fitness is also assessed for its ability to sustain an energy consumption over a longer period of time (Yamamoto et al., 1986; Mengele et al., 2002). Therefore, in this population, performance of aerobic exercise may not be in a comparable condition. Moreover, endurance training may require relatively low training volumes, at least one workout performed for 1–2 weeks, which may not be feasible in a short period of time. In addition, such training may not
The neural basis of fitness is thought to play a large part in the development of a wide range of behavioral and cognitive abilities. Individuals with an enhanced understanding of sports-playing and/or physical fitness as indicators of their cognitive skills are able to become better athletes. However, a lack of knowledge of how physical fitness in humans actually contributes to these abilities is well established and one that should not be underestimated. Some physiological and biochemical explanations of the neuropsychiatric differences in performance are available, but the main question remains why is a small proportion of the variation in brain function among certain sports and fitness types such as weightlifting so significant. A key to understanding this is to understand the brain and the fitness of different sports.
Cognitively Proficient Athletes
The most common form of mental fitness a person can perform are the primary mental tasks requiring focus, concentration, and coordination. Individuals with a lack of attentional coordination can be classified as having low motivation to perform these tasks. The only exception to this is when working out, while people who lack all of the basic mental tasks may have poor motivation to solve their mental puzzles. Individuals who are at high risk for developing a low motivation to perform these tasks have the lowest motivation to be able to maintain the tasks. These people also do not have good motivation to do the tasks correctly and in this case, they may be unable to get to the point where they can perform the difficult tasks needed to be performed. In short, these individuals do not actually have an increased ability to perform the tasks or to perform them correctly. These individuals are often referred to as ‘high effort’ and this description is usually used when the performance of the high-level tasks is being tested.
Intelligence
Many of the studies to date have used two different measures of intelligence such as a measure of perceived abilities to understand information (such as the ‘Knowledge Focused’ measure) and a measure of information processing abilities (eg. the ‘Know Language’ or the ‘Language Fluency’ measure). These three measures have been found to be strongly linked after controlled conditions have been evaluated. Using a simple measure of ‘knowledge focused’ we obtained an IQ score of 24 and a sensitivity level of 37, which includes the ability to discriminate between multiple possible responses in an extremely complex task (similar to the ability to detect false positive’s). We also calculated an IQ score of 30 and a sensitivity level of 29, which includes the ability to discriminate between multiple possible responses to both a complex and a non-complex stimulus. As you can see from these data, the ability to detect false negatives is highly significant.
Brain Function Among The Average Sports-Posing Sport-Posing Individuals
For the average sports-playing player, as I demonstrated in previous chapters, the training and conditioning of his competitive efforts for high-level competitive activity is extremely important. A person who concentrates on all activities at the same time and to that extent is also able to perform the most difficult (usually lower), non-competitive (usually higher) repetitive tasks at the same time. This may explain why the person with the lowest IQ scores (24 and 33) is being ranked very high in the elite ratings listed in this chapter.
To see why IQ may have an influence on athletic performance, consider the effect of body weight on the size of the glutes and the ability to run at more strenuous loads. However, the biggest change that occurs to a person’s athletic performance is increased resistance activity during the day. As is often the case when running, resistance acts as a training stimulus and the faster the individual is training, the less physical activity their body will do when doing the same activities at the same time. If this were to occur in some people they would be able to achieve a full 30 minutes more per day in strength and conditioning-training than if they were not. Therefore, a large part of the increased resistance activity seen with heavy and low physical activity training occurs not only during the week, but also after the exercise.
However, the amount of resistance activity seen during the day is also influenced by muscle power
How does a sports-playing individual respond to physical fitness? Sports-playing individuals are extremely successful. While their general physical fitness may be extremely low, their physical fitness may be high (I.J., Hahn, Cohen, Davis, & I.J., 2003). One of the strongest cognitive functions in a sport-playing individual, however, is that of planning and working memory (Berman, 2002). This ability may play an important role in sports-playing abilities. One of the first studies that reported this cognitive ability of sports-playing individuals consisted of a 10-minute marathon exercise with no preparation for the final task. It was found that the endurance training (i.e., marathon) individuals performed significantly better on both sprinting and marathon tasks compared with those who did not participate in the endurance group. These results suggest that aerobic exercise should be considered as an alternative method for fitness enhancement and that physical fitness can improve the general fitness of the fitness group.
The study of this study also involved the use of an experimental animal model to investigate the cognitive and physiological changes associated with each one of the endurance and marathon task. In another experiment, we also showed that the endurance trained individuals performed as well on two aerobic exercise protocols, one that was specific to one type of exercise but in addition to the two types of exercise. The latter two endurance training protocols employed a set of four aerobic exercise protocols (i.e., 15–30 h rest for three to four minutes before, 8 h rest for one to two hours) with aerobic exercise (i.e., a set of eight cycling routes to perform six in one set, plus 10 minutes of slow-running and run training for at least two hours before each session) (Schells, & McMenamin, 2004). These protocols have been validated by the results of a meta-, multi-national meta-analysis (Liu et al., 2006). This research has provided information on potential underlying factors that may be associated with aerobic exercise performance, including:
A higher proportion of the brain is devoted to physical fitness as assessed by a small number of tests in the form of strength, torque-type, and torque-motor function tests. However, physical fitness is also assessed for its ability to sustain an energy consumption over a longer period of time (Yamamoto et al., 1986; Mengele et al., 2002). Therefore, in this population, performance of aerobic exercise may not be in a comparable condition. Moreover, endurance training may require relatively low training volumes, at least one workout performed for 1–2 weeks, which may not be feasible in a short period of time. In addition, such training may not
in humans as they are also areas that seem to experience a disproportionately large degree of deterioration with age (Colcombe, Kramer, Erickson, Scalf, McAuley, Cohen, et al. 2004). Although the exact cause of this activity increase is still somewhat unclear in humans, animal research offers some likely explanations. One explanation offered by Colcombe, Kramer, Erickson, Scalf, McAuley, Cohen, et al. is that having a higher level of physical fitness allows for enhanced blood flow to those areas of the brain associated with executive control. This increased capillary supply results in increased metabolic resources,and thus, improved task performance. The other change, which seems to be of greater importance, is the increase of neurochemicals, especially one in particular called neurotrophin factor. Neurotrophin factor aids in the growth and preservation of neurons, creation of new synapses, and increased flexibility of synapses. All of this, say Colcombe et al. (2004), result in a “…brain that is more efficient, plastic, and adaptive, which translates into better learning and performance…”. Both this study and previous animal research indicate that increased physical fitness also causes a reduction in activity in other areas of the brain that are associated with causing conflict, and thus, slow down, central executive processes. These effects were observed in both people with an already existing high level of physical fitness and in those who participated in a three month exercise program during which they significantly improved physical fitness.
Another study conducted by Kramer et al. (1999) also examined the neurological basis for improved cognitive function as a result of increased physical fitness. The study examined the results of participants’ performance on cognitive tasks that either did or did not involve central executive processes both before and after a six month exercise program that was either aerobic or anaerobic in nature. This study also showed a
significant improvement in performance on cognitive tasks in correlation to improved physical fitness. In addition, the study found that performance on tasks not related to executive processes were not significantly benefited from exercise and that anaerobic exercise did not produce significantly improved performance on any of the tasks. Further more, because the study was conducted using participants who were previously “unfit”, the results imply that aerobic exercise may be beneficial to cognitive functions related to the frontal and pre-frontal cortices after even only a short period of time (Kramer et al.).
Memory is a significantMemory, and more specifically, short-term and working memory, has been a particular area of interest in research considering the effects of physical fitness on cognitive abilities. Memory seems to be related to many aspects of intelligence and, as discussed prior, is prone