United States: For the cycle-to-work commuters and those who begin a day with a jog or a brisk walk, the value of storing up some physical activity early in the day is well-known.
Now, activity is still regarded as beneficial for learning how to start improving the day ahead, and physical activity can be linked to a small enhancement of memory scores the next day, according to scientists.
Experts describe more benefits
Moderate to vigorous physical activity of 30 minutes together with sleeping for at least six hours during the night could help to enhance cognition the following morning, according to a University College London study intervention.
As Dr Mikaela Bloomberg, first author of the study, stated, “The takeaway is just [that] physical activity is good for your brain and good sleep helps that,” the Guardian reported.
The researchers pointed out that physical exercise had before now been believed to positively influence both immediate cognitive functioning and the likelihood of developing dementia.
What more have the experts noted?
Bloomberg, however, outlined many short-term effects that had been researched in lab environments and most indexed effects as per a temporal frame of minutes to hours.
These kinds of studies pointed towards such gains as possibly being due to an enhanced blood circulation in the brain, and encouragement of specific chemicals called neurotransmitters.
Now researchers say they have tried to examine the initial effects of physical activity in terms of real-life practice rather than just reporting on the advantage of brain study suggesting that the benefits these physical activities offer seem to linger beyond initial expectations.
Describing their cross-sectional study in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, Bloomberg and colleagues made the 76 participants, aged between 50 and 83 years without cognitive impairment or dementia, wear an accelerometer for eight days to monitor their sleep and physical activity in their daily lives.
Evaluation process
For the purpose of evaluation, participants also received simple online puzzles of their attention, memory, and processing, among other tests of their cognitive abilities on a daily basis, the Guardian reported.
The team said their results show that each 30-minute increase in moderate to vigorous physical activity on the previous day was followed by a 2-5 percent improvement in episodic and working memory scores next, but only the latter held up when the investigators factored in the participants’ sleep data.
“The idea is for people who have mild cognitive impairment, a very minor boost in cognitive performance on a day-to-day basis can make a huge difference,” she added.