Moment 165: This Exercise Enhances Mood, Memory & Concentration: David Raichlen

Steven Bartlett (0:03)

Is all activity the same? So if I'm doing strength training, is that as beneficial for my brain as potentially going for a run outdoors?

David Raichlen (0:11)

That's a great question. And there is not a ton of very clear work that's compared directly different types of activity in ways where I could tell you for sure, this is the best one, right? There are data that suggest that resistance training is beneficial to the brain. There's more work on endurance activity, and I actually think that's probably because it's easier to do rodent work on endurance activity than resistance, and so trying to translate across those models is a little bit easier. Both forms of exercise have benefits. They may be through different pathways. There may be different biological mechanisms that are underlying those benefits. I've kind of seen some cool work coming out lately that has tried to look at, for example, different types of endurance exercise. So there's a great study that came out. Are you familiar with orienteering? It's a sport where you're given a map and a compass, and you have to find your way across a route as fast as possible. So it kind of mixes endurance activity with spatial navigation and moving around your environment and figuring out where you are.

Steven Bartlett (1:19)

Typically done outside, right?

David Raichlen (1:20)

Oh, yeah, always done outside. Typically done on trails and things, but people do do it in cities as well.

Steven Bartlett (1:27)

Okay. So like, and this is over miles in kilometers?

David Raichlen (1:29)

Yeah, this would be like a trail run for something like that. And there's a great study that just came out looking at, it was a randomized control trial. So they actually randomized people into either an orienteering group or a hiking group or a control group. And over a couple months, they found that the orienteering group actually had better performance on cognitive tests, like memory tests and executive function tests than even the hiking group. Both of those groups did better than the control group, but there was actually this extra boost for the people who were in the orienteering group. So we're starting to see that maybe some different activities could potentially enhance the effects of exercise on the brain.

Steven Bartlett (2:11)

What's the conclusion there? What does that study hint at in terms of, because hiking you're out in nature, you're navigating your way up a hill or something, orienteering that it's almost like solving a puzzle, right? Because you've got a map and a compass.

David Raichlen (2:25)

Yeah. I mean, I think it fits into an evolutionary model, at least in my mind, where the purpose of being physically active is to move around a habitat to find things, find food, find water, find firewood. So physical activity in this sort of ecologically relevant world is a combination of cognitive challenges and physical challenges. So I think that when you combine them in the way that perhaps orienteering does or maybe some other sports, you might actually get a bigger boost for your buck, a bigger bang for your buck in terms of the brain benefits. And that I think is rooted in our evolutionary history. Like I said, I think that being active in an evolutionary sense always comes with sort of a cognitive challenge. Nobody's ever just going out for a workout. There's no reason to.

If you don't need to find something, you're going to relax and rest because you're an energy minimizer, right? Don't spend that energy if you don't have to.

Steven Bartlett (3:25)

Is there any animal studies that show how doing challenging exercise, so cognitively challenging exercise, so exercise that involves problem-solving improves our neuroplasticity or increases the amount of brain cells we have across our brain?

David Raichlen (3:39)

Yes, yeah, there have been. And a great impetus for our work was some of the work done in rodent studies by a professor named Gerd Kemperman. And he and his group did some work in mouse models where they combined access to running wheels with a very enriched cage environment. So they looked at, they did a very careful study where they looked at some mice who were just living in their cage, you know, normally a control group. They looked at mice that were given access to a running wheel. They looked at mice that were given access to this enriched environment that's cognitively challenging and things to play on. And then they looked at a combined group where they combined the running wheel with the enriched environment. And they found this effect where the combined environment doubled the growth and survival of new neurons compared to either wheel running alone or cage enrichment alone. So you got this really cool additive effect where you really enhance the effects of either one of those behaviors by combining them.