Science Behind Mental Exercise
When mental exercise or stimulation occurs, specific actions in the brain take place as a result. Neurons (connect) with other neurons to form a network. Typically, people with more neural connections are expected to have a higher IQ than people with fewer neural connections. Furthermore, mental exercise that involves using one’s non-dominant hand develops hand-brain coordination. A recent study has also shown that the brain is very similar to a muscle. This study says that during times the brain is being stimulated, it is actually growing in size, much like a muscle grows in size with exercise. When humans learn new things, the prefrontal cortex in the brain receives exercise. Also, the prefrontal cortex is the area of the brain that is known to weaken the most as age increases. This part of the brain controls reconciling contradictory thoughts, decision-making, foreseeing future events, and regulating social control. In addition, this area of the brain is strongly linked to a person’s general intelligence and personality. Therefore, it is imperative that the prefrontal cortex receives ample exercise to allow this part of the brain to remain sharp into old age. Without receiving enough exercise, it is possible that a person’s personality will change drastically during the later stages of life.
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Famous quotes containing the words science, mental and/or exercise:
“Science has nothing to be ashamed of even in the ruins of Nagasaki. The shame is theirs who appeal to other values than the human imaginative values which science has evolved.”
—Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974)
“... in doing our psychology, we want to attribute mental states fully opaquely because it’s the fully opaque reading which tells us what the agent has in mind, and it’s what the agent has in mind that causes his behavior.”
—Jerry Alan Fodor (b. 1935)
“What exercise is to the body, employment is to the mind and morals.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)