Sitting, standing, walking: How do they affect your memory?
Previous research has shown that exercise is beneficial for the brain and that it helps treat depression and prevent cognitive decline. So, what is the importance of posture and movement for the brain? A new study investigates.
Many studies have argued that some level of exercise is beneficial when it comes to protecting cognitive function and that leading a sedentary lifestyle will negatively affect a person's brain.
For instance, one study covered on Medical News Today earlier this year showed that aerobic exercise helps preserve brain health, keeping neurodegenerative diseases, such as dementia, at bay.
Research from last year even suggested that walking 4,000 steps each day can boost cognitive function in older adults.
Another recent study supported these findings from the reverse perspective, explaining that too much sitting harms the temporal lobe, an area of the brain that plays an essential role in processing memories and language.
Now, three researchers from Ludwig?Maximilians?University Munich in Germany — Gordon Dodwell, Hermann J. Müller, and Thomas Töllner — have found new evidence that aerobic exercise protects the brain.
Furthermore, their new study shows how sitting, standing, and walking each impact visual working memory, which is the brain's ability to store visual information spontaneously, for use in a current task.
The study's findings appear online in the British Journal of Psychology.
Moderate activity vs. no activity
"Acute aerobic exercise has been found to influence cognitive performance both subsequently and concurrently [during and after exercise]," the scientists write in the study paper.
"However, the influence on executive performance during acute exercise is less clear, with several accounts providing contradictory theory and evidence regarding the direction of effects," the authors add.
For this reason, they decided to use electroencephalography (EEG) — a technique that allows researchers to monitor a person's brain activity by recording electrical impulses — to see how people would perform on visual memory tasks while in a passive posture, or while physically active.
