Snowboarding is Good for Your Brain

If you think that snowboarding is good for your mind, you’re not just imagining it. Scientific research shows that exercise can actually make people smarter.

OK, so that’s the high-level, PR-pitch. I’m still collecting information, but what I have seen looks very interesting and encouraging. See for example some reports from 2003:

A press release from the University of Illinois:

“Interestingly, we found that fitness per se didn’t have any influence on brain density,” said Kramer, a professor of psychology and member of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at Illinois. “It is fitness as it interacts with age that has the positive effects. Older adults show a real decline in brain density in white and gray areas, but fitness actually slows that decline.”

An abstract from a gerontology journal:

“These findings extend the scope of beneficial effects of aerobic exercise beyond cardiovascular health, and they suggest a strong solid biological basis for the benefits of exercise on the brain health of older adults.”

A popular-level survey from 2006 (LA Times, registration may be required):

“Aside from genetics, four factors stood out as good predictors of how well people keep their mental edge as they age, says Marilyn Albert, a cognitive neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who sat on the panel.

The fab four, Albert says, are physical activity, mental activity, social engagement and cardiovascular health.”

And another newspaper review, from the Wall Street Journal (good for the next week or so before it goes behind a subscription firewall):

“For the first time, scientists have found something that not only halts the brain shrinkage that starts in a person’s 40s, especially in regions responsible for memory and higher cognition, but actually reverses it: aerobic exercise.”

So get out there and ride … and ride fast!