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Exercise Makes You Smarter
So exercise in my experience improve academic performance. There have been so many studies on how exercise improve cognative function and spatial reasoning that I have no hope at including all of them or really even a small percentage of articles in the entry. For one I don't have enough time to do all of the research right now and two the articles are so full of information that I like to read them and just sit and think about how they relate to me.
Exercise helps increase the number of new neurons that are generated[1]. However in the study by Praag et al not all forms of exercise lead to an increase of neurons. There is much more to just generation of a neuron but also the proliferation and the survival of a new neuron. Running in the mice actually help to produce the most number of new neurons but close to half of them died[1]. Now with the mice that had an enriched environment didn't generate as many new neurons but about 85% survived[1]. So I'd like to propose that if enriched environment and a form of exercise that greatly increases new neuron generation such as running were to be combined then an individual might be smarter.
Now exercise is more than just an improvement on the generation of new neurons but also the retention of the neurons that are already there. The study by Grondard et al[2] supports that the mice were running had longer neuron life. The study was based on how to treat a neurological disease in the human population called Type 2 Spinal Muscular Atrophy. One of the leading ways to help the patients is to prevent the onset of complications[2]. By preventing the onset of complications the life expectancy is significantly increased. In the mice the life was increased from about thirteen days to twenty-one days[2]. A relationship to humans has also been drawn with an increase of life. Now part of the results of the first study about neural cell generation may also be partially attributed to the extended life of the already living cells.
A direct study of humans is warranted on the performance of those who exercise and those who are seditary. In Fitness Effects on the Cognitive Function of Older Adults it is noted that not only do younger adults perform cognitive[3]. It must be pointed out that the performance increase is not black and white. Like the mice experiments not all exercises may result in better cognitive skills.
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