Walking Expands Your Mind, Literally

Imagine this: Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and other schools assigned 120 people (average age mid-60s) to one of two groups. One group walked around a track for 40 minutes three times a week; the other group did yoga or resistance training. After one year, researchers found that the volume of the hippocampus of the walkers had increased by 2 percent on average, and the size of the other group had shrunk, as is normal for people that age, by about 1.4 percent. The researchers also found that greater size of the hippocampus is associated with greater production of BDNF, a protein believed to encourage the growth of new neurons.

Read the study in PNAS.

Read a report on the research in the New York Times.