Tag: mental

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My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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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.”

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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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.

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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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.

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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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.