Throughout the years many studies have been conducted to find out if the brain can in fact be described as being ‘like a muscle’. Bellow are a few examples that support that specific physical activities have indeed the capacity of altering the structure of the brain…
In the 1990s, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif, discovered that exercise provides benefits to the brain. The scientists examined the impact on brain activity in mice by having one group ‘exercise’ on running wheels while another group remained sedentary. The results showed that the mice that exercised produced far more cells in the area of the brain controlling memory creation than animals that didn’t run, as well as performing better on subsequent memory tests.
The study above discovered that exercise provides benefits to the brain. It indicated that vigorous aerobic exercise could have a positive impact in cognitive development. Further tests on humans have reinforced the above results by finding an improvement on people with mild cognitive impairment (often a precursor to dementia). In light of the above, an Australian research team have been looking into whether resistance training has a similar effect on the brain.