Physical Workouts Pump Up Brain’s Spacial Skills

Geezer has the vaguest recollection of writing something, a few weeks ago, about fewer calories leading to better memory. It may have happened. Now comes a study published in the wildly popular Hippocampus, suggesting that, at least in people over the age of 59, spatial memory skills correlate nicely with physical fitness. The research, conducted at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, measured the left and right hippocampi, the cardiorespiratory fitness, and tested the spacial reasoning of 165 adults between the ages of 59 and 81. As described in this write up
from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign news office, the researchers found a significant association between an individual’s fitness and his or her performance
on certain spatial memory tests. There was also a strong correlation
between fitness and hippocampus size.
“The higher fit people have a bigger hippocampus, and the people that
have more tissue in the hippocampus have a better spatial memory,” said
U. of I. psychology professor Art Kramer, who led the study with Pittsburgh psychology professor Kirk Erickson.
Read more from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.