Bad news for couch potatoes: A new study released this week suggests that exercise not only improves your body, but also keeps your brain sharp.
Finnish researchers looked back at previous studies that compared people’s memory abilities across different levels of physical activity. They found that athletes always had better working memory than others, especially sedentary people. The findings are the latest to show that exercise is one of the best ways to improve our brain power, which is especially important as we age.
Scientists from the University of Jyväskylä conducted a study, hoping to better understand the relationship between exercise and mental performance. Some studies have suggested that exercise is related to cognitive development, including our working memory—a cognitive feature that allows us to integrate small details at once to perform tasks (working memory overlaps but is often considered separate from short-term memory).
People who play sports may have the opportunity to develop better working memory, as athletes often make split decisions between sports. But according to the researchers, there hasn’t been a review of the evidence comparing the working memory of athletes and non-athletes, so they decided to do it themselves.
Researchers analyzed 21 studies involving 1,455 participants, mostly athletes who played basketball, baseball, or fencing. They found that athletes overall had a small, but statistically significant advantage in memory performance over non-athletes across different levels of activity and sport. This difference was even greater when the athletes were compared to sedentary people, meaning they exercised less.
“Our findings show a consistent connection between sports and advanced technology [working memory] activity, while sedentary life seems to be associated with it [working memory] impairment,” the researchers wrote in their paper, published this month in the journal Memory.
These types of studies can only show a correlation between playing sports and better working memory, not a clear cause and effect relationship. But the studies analyzed by the researchers were judged to have a low risk of bias, which is an important indicator of research quality. Many studies have also found that exercise can generally strengthen our memory. So the authors say their findings show the importance of encouraging people to play sports and stay active.
“These results suggest the benefits of a sports mindset and emphasize the importance of an active lifestyle for improving mental health,” they wrote.
Importantly, these benefits are not limited to young people who are already more likely to play sports or exercise. Research has found that regular exercise is linked to improved working memory among older people as well, while exercise also prevents the age-related memory loss we often experience as we age.
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