Undertaking exercises four hours post study sessions can up your chance of remembering whatever you learnt. If you delay your physical activity, you can recollect by nine per cent, compared to others who exercise immediately, or those who do no exercise at all.
Laboratory studies of animals indicate that catecholamines, or naturally occurring chemical compounds in the body, which include dopamine and norepinephrine, can enhance memory consolidation. They can also boost catecholamines, said the study.
While the molecules are vital to solidify and store memories for long-term retrieval, they may be more useful not when memories are fresh, but when the brain has stored them safely away.
"There is good evidence from animal data that the release of certain neurotransmitters---dopamine and norepinephrine---leads to a biochemical cascade leading to the production of so-called plasticity-related proteins," says study author Guillén Fernández, director of theDonders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour at Radboud University Medical Center. "These proteins help stabilize new memory traces, which would otherwise be lost. Physical exercise is at the start of this sequence because it is accompanied by the release of dopamine and norepinephrine."
For a study conducted with 72 people split into three groups, scientists placed 90 images in different spots on a computer screen and asked the three groups to study and recall them. The first group exercised after four hours, the second immediately after the lesson and the third performed no exercise.
The first group worked out on exercise bikes and underwent interval training for 35 minutes. They exercised at an intensity of 80 percent of their maximum heart rates. They returned after two days to take a test for evaluation of how much they could remember, and their brains were subjected to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
The MRIs showed that the first group, which exercised after four hours, scored an average of 87 per cent compared to the other two groups, which scored 80 percent on average. The first group disclosed the information precisely, with representations in the hippocampus. This region in the brain is very important for memory and learning.
"Our results suggest that appropriately timed physical exercise can improve long-term memory and highlight the potential of exercise as an intervention in educational and clinical settings," the researchers said.
"It shows that we can improve memory consolidation by doing sports after learning," said Guillén Fernández of the Donders Institute at the Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands.
The study was published in Current Biology.
