Joseph Everett - WIL
1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2017–2018
15:15 · 4.3M views · Dec 27, 2016
A video arguing that exercise matters for the brain as much as the body, linking movement, the nervous system and BDNF to learning and memory. It draws on research connecting complex movement to brain development.
Cited in threads on exercise and cognition as an accessible overview of the movement-brain connection.
3 comments from Hacker News
This video this video and this book [LINK] suggest that it’s movement. They talk about how complex movement in creatures typically correlates with the size of the brain. Anecdotally, I’ve been doing the Cambridge Brain Sciences[1] tests every so often over the past few months to see how various things affect my score (mainly because I wanted to see which nootropics were most effective) and the best scores always occurred on days where I got exercise and the worst scores were in days where I didn’t and also got little sleep. My absolute best scores (99.5 percentile, although the next days scores were much, much lower and my average has been about 50-60ish) were on a day when I got approx 1.5 hours of brisk walking (throughout the day, not all at once), 8+ hours sleep the night before and I had been taking nootropics. I imagine diet also plays a part, but I’ve not yet experimented. I’m also not sure f sleep or exercise affects me most positive, but together they certainly make a huge difference. Nothing conclusive, for sure, but it does make me think that exercise/movement may play a big part. [1] [LINK]
> And now a days I think it goes without saying that the average person exerts substantially less energy per day than even our luxurious Ancient Greeks did. Lives are much easier. That right there could be your reason. The human body was not designed to be stagnant. I read recently that the whole reason for the evolutionary development of brains in both animals and humans is to facilitate complex movement. Several studies done throughout the decades show a correlation between greater physical activity and better academic/learning results. The ancient greeks also believed there was a connection between improving the body and improving the mind. this video
Exercise has a lot of great benefits even though it's effect on weight loss is rather minimal. One of the biggest reasons I personally work out is for the ability to learn faster. Exercise gives you more Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) which "improves the function of neurons, encourages their growth, and strengthens and protects them against the process of cell death." "WHY Exercise is so Underrated (Brain Power & Movement Link)" this video "We found that vocabulary learning was 20 percent faster after intense physical exercise as compared to the other two conditions." [LINK]