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Did you know you can beat stress, lift your mood, fight memory loss, sharpen your intellect, and function better than ever simply by elevating your heart rate and breaking a sweat? The evidence is incontrovertible: aerobic exercise physically remodels our brains for peak performance. In SPARK, John Ratey, MD embarks upon a fascinating journey through the mindbody connection, illustrating that exercise is truly our best defense against everything from depression to ADD to addiction to menopause to Alzheimers. Filled with amazing case studies (such as the revolutionary fitness program in Naperville, Illinois, that has put the local school district of 19,000 kids first in the world of science test scores), SPARK is the first book to explore comprehensively the connection between exercise and the brain. It will change forever
[...]... movement, they can be recruited by other areas and used for thinking This is why learning how to play the piano makes it easier for kids to learn math The prefrontal cortex will co-opt the mental power of the physical skills and apply it to other situations Learning the asanas of yoga, the positions of ballet, the skills of gymnastics, the elements of figure skating, the contortions of Pilates, the forms of. .. permeability of the blood -brain barrier, prying back the fence to let other factors through during exercise Another important element from the body that makes its way to the brain is FGF-2, which, like IGF-1 and VEGF, is increased during exercise and is necessary for neurogenesis In the body, FGF-2 helps tissue grow, and in the brain it’s important to the process of LTP As we age, production of all three of these... crank up the molecular machinery of learning They are also produced within the brain and promote stem-cell division, especially during exercise The broader importance is that these factors trace a direct link from the body to the brain Take IGF-1, a hormone released by the muscles when they sense the need for more fuel during activity Glucose is the major energy source for the muscles and the sole... lobby for daily physical education even during his back -and- forth battle with the disease They’ve both become grassroots experts on the subject of exercise and the brain They learned by grilling speakers from the conferences Lawler organized, attending sports physiology seminars, reading neuroscience research papers, and constantly e-mailing their findings to each other And they’ve taken it upon themselves... form new associations, and reporting back to the boss A memory, scientists believe, is a collection of information fragments dispersed throughout the brain The hippocampus serves as a way station, receiving the fragments from the cortex, and then bundling them together and sending them back up as a map of a unique new pattern of connections Brain scans show that when we learn a new word, for example, the. .. (as does the hippocampus and other pertinent areas, such as the auditory cortex) Once the circuit has been established by the firing of glutamate, and the word is learned, the prefrontal cortex goes dark It has overseen the initial stages of the project, and now it can leave the responsibility to a team of capable employees while it moves on to new challenges This is how we come to know things and how... throughout the brain “I expected the big changes to occur in motor-sensory areas of the brain — the motor cortex, the cerebellum, the sensory cortex, maybe even the basal ganglia a little bit — because they’re all involved with movement,” recalls Carl Cotman, director of the Institute for Brain Aging and Dementia at the University of California, Irvine, who designed the study “We developed the first films and, ... hidden food, and running wheels They also grouped the animals together, so they could socialize and play It wasn’t all peace and love, though, and eventually the rodents’ brains were dissected Living in an environment with more sensory and social stimuli, the lab tests showed, altered the structure and function of the brain Not only did the rats fare better on learning tasks, but their brains weighed... cultural model and, ultimately, reconnect the body and the brain As you’ll see, they belong together 2 Learning Grow Your Brain Cells in Titusville or in Naperville go for a mile run in gym, they are more prepared to learn in their other classes: their senses are heightened; their focus and mood are improved; they’re less fidgety and tense; and they feel more motivated and invigorated The same goes... becomes, and the easier it is for the signal to fire and make the connection The initial activity marshals existing stores of glutamate in the axon to be sent across the synapse and reconfigures receptors on the receiving side to accept the signal The voltage on the receiving side of the synapse becomes stronger in its resting state, thereby attracting the glutamate signal like a magnet If the firing . graders took the test — not merely the best and the brightest. How did they stack up? On the science section of the TIMSS, Naperville’s students finished first, just ahead of Singapore, and then the North. to lobby for daily physical education even during his back -and- forth battle with the disease. They’ve both become grassroots experts on the subject of exercise and the brain. They learned by grilling. plain English the inspiring science connecting exercise and the brain and to demonstrate how it plays out in the lives of real people. I want to cement the idea that exercise has a profound impact