Sweat Science

Just read an interesting article by Matt Richtel in the New York Times. The nut: Researchers believe that our brains need downtime in order properly assimilate new information and memories, but we now have so many devices to fill every moment with distraction and titillation that we may be compromising our ability to learn.

It’s 1 p.m. on a Thursday and Dianne Bates, 40, juggles three screens. She listens to a few songs on her iPod, then taps out a quick e-mail on her iPhone and turns her attention to the high-definition television. Just another day at the gym…

But scientists point to an unanticipated side effect: when people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas. Ms. Bates, for example, might be clearer-headed if she went for a run outside, away from her devices, research suggests.

This is a new wrinkle in a very familiar debate about the pros and cons of exercising with headphones or other electronic devices. I have to confess that, though I’ve read all the literature about how music can pump you up and so on, I’m in the shrinking minority that prefers their exercise unwired. And my reasons, on an intuitive level, fit with what Richtel describes in this article. My life is pretty hectic, and I’m bombarded by a constant stream of information and stimulus. Most of us are these days, I think. I’d love to say that, when I head out for a run, it gives me a chance to think in peace, to have those deep insights that require uninterrupted meditation. But really, I usually just space out. If these researchers are right, though, that period of mental blankness could play a key role in the epiphanies I have later on, since my brain has been busy consolidating and organizing information.

Of course, there’s a flip side. It’s undeniable that lots of people really like exercising with music and/or TV. And that’s got to be better than not exercising at all, as Richtel’s article also acknowledges:

Some researchers say that whatever downside there is to not resting the brain, it pales in comparison to the benefits technology can bring in motivating people to sweat.

“Exercise needs to be part of our lives in the sedentary world we’re immersed in. Anything that helps us move is beneficial,” said John J. Ratey, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and author of “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.”

But all things being equal, Mr. Ratey said, he would prefer to see people do their workouts away from their devices: “There is more bang for your buck doing it outside, for your mood and working memory.”

mental

Okay, that’s not really a fair headline or a good summary of the research I’m describing (which is a neat study by researchers at Princeton, explained in an excellent and detailed press release). But I have to admit, I’m not always perfectly neutral — like everyone, I prefer to see some results more than others. And research into caloric restriction is a good example: there’s been plenty of evidence over the past few years of the age-defying benefits of starving yourself:

To date, caloric restriction has been observed to extend lifespan in every organism tested, including worms, mice and monkeys, [Princeton prof Coleen] Murphy said. While the reasons for this are still under investigation, scientists generally believe that the benefits of caloric restriction go well beyond preventing diseases associated with obesity, such as heart disease and diabetes, Murphy added. It appears that limiting food intake actually slows the aging process.

In general, I’m used to leafing through studies and press releases that give me a nice pat on the back. Aerobic exercise is good? Super, I do tons of it! Eating lots of fruits and vegetables is good? Fantastic, I do pretty well on that front. But caloric restriction? That’s the antithesis of everything I stand for, which is doing ridiculous amounts of exercise and consequently being able to eat more or less until I get bored with no ill effects — or at least, no ill effects that I knew of until the emergence of this idea that eating less slows down aging.

So you should read the press release for yourself, and judge its merits in an unbiased manner… but here’s what I took from it:

Young worms whose calories were restricted had normal short-term memories, but their long-term memories were severely impaired; the memories faded within 24 hours, as opposed to 40 hours in normal worms.

(40 hours in worm time corresponds to about 15 people years.)

Now, the study has a lot more to say. While caloric restriction impaired long-term memory, the (impaired) memory abilities didn’t decline as much with old age as they normally do. The study also investigates how insulin-signalling pathways affect longevity and cognitive function (this appears to operate independently of the calorie-restriction effects). So there’s a lot of on-the-one-hand-this, on-the-other-hand-that going on. But it’s the first sign I’ve seen that caloric restriction, even if it extends life, may have some significant downsides:

“The assumption in the field of longevity research has been that organisms able to live longer will function longer as well,” said [Murphy]. “It seems we need to revisit that.”

aging, mental

Two recent items related to what makes your brain work better. First, a study in Nature on the benefits of the current fad for “brain training”:

The largest trial to date of ‘brain-training’ computer games suggests that people who use the software to boost their mental skills are likely to be disappointed…

“There were absolutely no transfer effects” from the training tasks to more general tests of cognition, says Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognition and Brian Sciences Unit in Cambridge, UK, who led the study. “I think the expectation that practising a broad range of cognitive tasks to get yourself smarter is completely unsupported.”

One major criticism of the study is that the largest effects of brain training are anticipated in adults over 60, at which point mental sharpness may already be slipping. Also, the total training time in the study averaged just four hours, which may not be enough to offer any benefits.

With that in mind, it was interesting to see this interview with Barbara Strauch, who has just written a book on the “grown-up” brain:

Q. Is there anything you can do to keep your brain healthy and improve the deficits, like memory problems?

A. There’s a lot of hype in this field in terms of brain improvement. I did set out to find out what actually works and what we know. What we do with our bodies has a huge impact on our brains. Our brains are more like our hearts in that everything you do for your heart is thought to be equally as good or better for your brain. Exercise is the best studied thing you can do to your brain. It increases brain volume, produces new baby brain cells in grownup brains. Even when our muscles contract, it produces growth chemicals. Using your body can help your brain.

I’m all in favour of undertaking challenging cognitive tasks to stay sharp (and for fun) — but aerobic exercise is still the best thing you can do for your brain.

mental

I posted a few times last month about the sometimes irresistible urge to race in practice. In that context, I was interested to see a description of this study, published in PNAS last week by neuroscientists at Washington University in St. Louis:

Whether it’s for money, marbles or chalk, the brains of reward-driven people keep their game faces on, helping them win at every step of the way. Surprisingly, they win most often when there is no reward.

Basically, the researchers used fMRI scans to monitor the brains of people participating in word games with and without monetary rewards. They found that, once an association between activity and reward is established, the pattern of brain activity shifts to automatic mode so that the actual presence of the reward is irrelevant.

The research has important implications for understanding the nature of persistent motivation, how the brain creates such states, and why some people seem to be able to use motivation more effectively than others.

They suspect the mechanism has to do with dopamine:

“It would be like the dopamine neurons recognize a cup of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and tell the lateral PFC the right action strategy to get the reward — to grab a spoon and bring the ice cream to your mouth,” Braver says. “We think that the dopamine neurons fires to the cue rather than the reward itself, especially after the brain learns the relationship between the two. We’d like to explore that some more.”

So in an athletic context, maybe that means the cues surrounding a hard training session are sufficient to spark some of the same brain chemistry that takes over in a race with big rewards on the line, even though the practice doesn’t have any rewards of its own.

mental

A new study from Harvard University suggests that it’s good to be a good guy, but better to be a bad guy:

Study participants who did good deeds — or even just imagined themselves helping others — were better able to perform a subsequent task of physical endurance. The research, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, shows a similar or even greater boost in physical strength following dastardly deeds.

The researcher,  a psychology grad student named Kurt Gray, calls the effect “moral transformation.” It suggests that we may have cause and effect backwards, he says: It’s not that people who do great things have incredible strength and willpower; instead, people who attempt great things gain strength and willpower by making the attempt.

So what does this mean for exercisers? Well, I haven’t been able to dig up a copy of the original paper, so I’m relying on a press release whose details are somewhat sketchy:

Gray’s findings are based on two studies. In the first, participants were given a dollar and told either to keep it or to donate it to charity; they were then asked to hold up a 5 lb. weight for as long as they could. Those who donated to charity could hold the weight up for almost 10 seconds longer, on average.

In a second study, participants held a weight while writing fictional stories of themselves either helping another, harming another, or doing something that had no impact on others. As before, those who thought about doing good were significantly stronger than those whose actions didn’t benefit other people.

But surprisingly, the would-be malefactors were even stronger than those who envisioned doing good deeds.

So it doesn’t sound like this will be a magic ticket to unlimited strength and endurance. Still, it might be worth keeping the power of mental imagery in mind next time you’re working out — you might combine the power of evil thoughts with the ergogenic effects of swearing for maximum effect.

mental

When you kick a soccer ball, it tends to go where you’re looking. The problem is that when you’re anxious, you tend to fixate on threats — the goalkeeper, in this case — and consequently kick it straight at him. That’s the message from an interesting University of Exeter study published last month, which I just noticed thanks to Dan Peterson’s blog.

The players wore special glasses which enabled the researchers to record precise eye movements and analyse the focus of each footballer’s gaze and the amount of time spent looking at different locations in the goal. The results showed that when anxious, the footballers looked at the goalkeeper significantly earlier and for longer. This change in eye behaviour made players more likely to shoot towards the centre of the goal, making it easier for the keeper to save.

The solution? “Research shows that the optimum strategy for penalty takers to use is to pick a spot and shoot to it, ignoring the goalkeeper in the process,” the study’s author says. And to do that, you need to practice, so that the skill becomes so ingrained it no longer requires conscious control, as discussed in this Jockology column.

mental, sports psych

To ring in the New Year, some good news for those who have been exercising (and for those who haven’t, some incentive to get started in 2010!). It’s yet another study linking cardiovascular fitness and intelligence — a familiar topic, but with a few interesting wrinkles.

Swedish researchers examined the records of 1.2 million men who enlisted in military service at the age of 18 between 1950 and 1976, including 268,000 pairs of brothers and 1,432 pairs of identical twins (read the abstract from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences here). The researchers were particularly interested in young adults, because it’s a time when your brain changes rapidly. Intelligence was positively correlated with cardiovascular fitness (as measured by stationary biking), but there was no correlation between intelligence and muscular strength.

In addition, cardiovascular fitness at age 18 often predicted socioeconomic status and educational attainment later in life. When the researchers examined the twin data, they found that environment, not genetics, played the biggest role in these associations.

To be more precise, genetics explained less than 15% of the variation, while environmental influences explained more than 80%. So fitness is, to a large degree, within your control.

cardio, mental

It’s pretty commonly accepted folk wisdom that a good workout helps blow off steam and reduce anxiety. Now there are some interesting new studies suggesting that exercise may play a much deeper role in making our brains “stress-proof.” In an experiment with rats, Princeton University researchers found that the new neurons that grow in response to exercise are less likely to react to stress than regular neurons:

The “cells born from running,” the researchers concluded, appeared to have been “specifically buffered from exposure to a stressful experience.” The rats had created, through running, a brain that seemed biochemically, molecularly, calm.

Gretchen Reynolds does a nice job describing this research in the New York Times. In another experiment, rats that exercised for three weeks didn’t show signs of a calmer brain, but those who exercised for six weeks did. It’s not clear how long humans need to exercise to see these changes, but the lesson is pretty clear:

Keep running or cycling or swimming. (Animal experiments have focused exclusively on aerobic, endurance-type activities.) You may not feel a magical reduction of stress after your first jog, if you haven’t been exercising. But the molecular biochemical changes will begin, Dr. Greenwood says. And eventually, he says, they become “profound.”

mental

Over the past few months, I’ve posted a few links to interesting studies about the potential positive and negative effects of distractions on your workout. I decided to take a deeper look at the literature in this field, and put together a Jockology column that appears in today’s Globe and Mail on the topic.

The question

I love listening to music or watching TV when I exercise. How does that affect my workout?

The answer

In a forthcoming study, British researchers secretly sped up or slowed down music by 10 per cent and observed the effect on subjects riding exercise bikes. Sure enough, like marionettes on musical strings, the riders unconsciously sped up or slowed down.

The results add to a complex body of research on how distractions influence our exercise performance, extending far beyond the simple psych-up provided by motivational lyrics. Instead of just hitting shuffle next time you’re at the gym, you might be able to harness these benefits by taking control of your playlist to enhance your workout. [read on...]

Ultimately, it’s a pretty complicated stew of different (and sometimes conflicting) effects. You might be listening to a tune whose motivational lyrics urge you forward, but also distract you from the physical cues you might otherwise rely on to maintain your intensity. And you might find your breathing or stride rate locking in sync with the music — which could be good or bad, depending on the tempo. And all of those factors might be overridden by the simple question of how much you like the tune that’s playing. So for now, I think optimizing a playlist remains a matter of personal preference.

(And I almost hesitate to say this, because I realize I’m in a shrinking minority, but my own inclination is to exercise in silence. If I’m outside, I like hearing my surroundings, particularly if I’m in a nice forest or park. And in general, I like to let my thoughts wander aimlessly and free-associate. The problem with music, I find, is that I tend to really listen to it, so it guides and anesthetizes my thoughts. For the same reason, I can’t write with music on in the background — it grabs my attention too forcefully.)

mental, sports psych

A few months ago, I wrote about some research showing that people in “spinning” classes tended to exercise wayyy harder than if they’d just hopped on an exercise bike by themselves. In fact, many spinners were reaching intensities higher than the “maximum” predicted by researchers! With that in mind, I was interested to see a recent study in Biology Letters from researchers at Oxford University about the chemical effects of group workouts. As a BBC report put it:

Exercising together appears to increase the level of the feel-good endorphin hormones naturally released during physical exertion, a study suggests. A team from Oxford University carried out tests on 12 rowers after a vigorous workout in a virtual boat. Those who trained alone withstood less pain - a key measure of endorphins - than those who exercised together.

It’s worth noting that they didn’t simply measure rowing performance, where the motivational effects of being in a group might have helped the subjects push harder. They actually subjected them to a torture test: after the rowing, they inflated a blood-pressure sleeve around the subjects’ arms to cut off circulation, and timed how long they could withstand the pain. (Resistance to pain is a proxy for endorphin production.) Sure enough, the solo exercisers couldn’t last as long as the group exercisers, indicating that there was something going on inside the body during the group workout.

The researchers speculate that this mechanism may be the key to other social activities (”such as laughter, music-making and dancing”). More importantly, from our point of view, it’s good to have a reason to seek out training partners!

mental, sports psych