How Exercise Affects The Brain

How important is physical exercise to the brain? Everyone has heard the phrase “Use it or lose it”, but does exercise fall into the “use it” section? Exercise is very important due to the fact that it not only improves the body physically, but exercise also helps the brain mentally. The goal is to determine the effect of exercise on the brain and the critical brain function, the memory. It is bad to be a couch potato due to the fact that research shows that a sedentary lifestyle impacts our brain and body negatively. Regular exercise is a good way for keeping the brain cells fit and functioning. Neurotrophic factors are produced when the nerve cells are stimulated by exercise, but what is a neurotrophic factor? Neurotrophic factors are proteins that encourage brain cells to grow and connect with other neurons, in other words, they act like fertilizer for the brain. …show more content…
Some of the rats ran every single day on the treadmills and the researchers found that those who ran had different levels of neurogenesis, the growth and development of nervous tissue, than those who didn’t. They found this out by microscopically examining brain tissue from the hippocampus of each rat. One of the researchers said that “sustained aerobic exercise might be most beneficial for brain health also in humans”. The result of this experiment the researchers did is very important because in previous research the new hippocampal neurons produced as a result of neurogenesis. Neurogenesis are needed for things like learning temporally or complex tasks and because of the research, it is possible that by promoting neurogenesis by exercise, the neuron reserve of the hippocampus can be increased which would also improve the preconditions for learning for