Exercise may improve post-learning processes
A series of Dutch experiments linked aerobic exercises that are completed four hours after a memorization to improved recall. According to the study team, newly-learned information turns into long-term knowledge through a process of stabilization and integration of memories. This requires certain brain chemicals that are also released during physical exercise, including dopamine, noradrenaline (norepinephrine) and a growth factor called BDNF.
Senior author Guillen Fernandez, director of the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behavior in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, said that after learning, the brain processes new memories for a while and that physical exercise is able to improve these post-learning processes.
Researchers recruited 72 participants and tasked them with learning to match a series of 90 locations with pictures over a 40-minute period. They aimed to explore when exercise would most improve learning. The participants were split into three groups: one group exercised immediately after learning, one group exercised four hours later and one group did not exercise at all. The exercise groups did interval training for 35 minutes on a stationary bike, including spurts at maximum intensity.
The group that had exercised four hours after learning remembered significantly more information on the follow-up test, while the immediate-exercise group did no better than the group that did not exercise.
Activity in the hippocampus, a part of the brain associated with forming memories, was very similar among people in the delayed-exercise group during the recall task, but less consistent in the other participants, the researchers note.
They speculate that the consistency of activation in the hippocampus in the delayed-exercise group could indicate greater “efficiency or coherence” in the way the brain pulls up the memory and “might relate to differences in memory strength.”
While strong memories will be remembered no matter what, Fernandez said, weaker memories that would normally be forgotten within a day may last longer if the brain releases more dopamine and norepinephrine.
People looking to improve their learning should perform fairly intense exercise to make sure that enough of the critical brain chemicals are released, he said, but cautioned against taking this too far. “Very intensive exercise might also have negative effects.”
The authors note that more research is needed to determine if exercise will help memories last beyond the two-day period they studied. They add that the type of memory may be important, and that procedural or “body” memory of activities like tying a shoe may be better helped by immediate exercise than other kinds of memories.
