Exercise increases brain connectivity and efficiency – ScienceDaily

In his previous work, Marc Roig, lead author of the study, had previously demonstrated that exercise helps to consolidate muscle or motor memory. What he and the McGill research team sought to discover this time around, that's why it was exactly the case. What was happening in the brain, while the mind and the muscles were interacting? What helped the body maintain its motor skills?

A muscular video game

To find out, the research team asked participants to perform two different tasks. The first, known as "pinch task", is a bit like a muscular video game. It consists of grabbing an object related to a player's joystick (and known as a dynamometer) and using different degrees of force to move the cursor up and down to connect the red rectangles on a computer screen. as soon as possible. The task was chosen because it involved the participants in the engine learning while they were trying to modulate the force with which they were gripping the dynamometer to move the cursor on the screen. This was then followed by fifteen minutes of exercise or rest.

Participants were then asked to repeat an abbreviated version of this task, called a manual task, at intervals of 30, 60, 90 minutes, after exercise or rest. the researchers evaluated their level of brain activity. This task involved participants simply grasping the dynamometer repeatedly, for a few seconds, with a degree of force similar to that used to reach some of the target rectangles in the "pinch task". The final stage of the study involved that participants from both groups repeat the "pinch task" eight and twenty-four hours after performing it, thus allowing the researchers to capture and compare the results. brain activity and connectivity as motor memories were consolidated

. More effective brain activity

The researchers found that those who exercised were constantly able to repeat the "pinch task" linking different areas of the brain more efficiently and with less brain activity than those who did not. had not exercised. More importantly, the reduction in brain activity in the exercise group correlated with better motor retention twenty-four hours after motor practice. This suggests that even a short period of intense exercise can create an optimal brain state during motor memory consolidation, which improves motor skill retention.

When they examined more precisely what was happening, the researchers found that exercise, there was less brain activity, probably because the neural connections between and in the hemispheres Brain had become more effective

"because neural activation in the brain of those who had exercised was much lower." Maso, the first author on the paper, "the neural resources could then be put to other tasks." Exercise can help release some of your brain to do other things. "

The Importance of Sleep

What the researchers found particularly intriguing was that when they tested the participants at the 8-hour mark, there was little difference between the groups in the retention of skills . In fact, the two groups were less able to retain the skills they had acquired, than they were at the twenty-four, when the difference between the two groups was again apparent.

"What this suggests to us, and that is where we go next with our research, is that sleep can interact with exercise to optimize the consolidation of motor memories," explains Marc Roig, the main author of the article. "It's very exciting to work in this area right now because there is still much to learn and research opens doors to health interventions that can potentially make a big difference in people's lives." .

History Source: [19659014] Material Provided by McGill University . Note: Content can be edited by style and duration.