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TEDx Talks
Published: 2011-12-02
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdDnPYr6R0o
no lighting to be here what I want to try and you today if at the main theme lineup of speakers today %HESITATION by bringing the brain into our discussion creative spark and I want to do but do that by telling you about some of the newest research that I've been doing in my neuroscience research lab at New York University asking the question can't aerobic exercise that
is can going to the gym actually improve your learning memory and cognition also want to address the question of whether increase Robert exercise can also make you more creative now I remember the day that I realized I wanted you become a neuroscientist I was a freshman at UC Berkeley now with taking a %HESITATION freshman seminar class with just ten or fifteen of us called the brain
and its potential Popeye Marian diamond Houston in the from the classroom and up there at the front she had this beautiful box and what their gloved hands she opened that hot box it out she pulled a real live fixed human brain now it was the very first time I'd seen a human brain in what she told us was that what she was holding in her hands
was V. most complex structure known to mankind it's the only structure that can think about itself and one of the most amazing things about the brain is that he can change as a function of the environment EQ learn it can grow and I thought that was the coolest thing I've ever heard in my whole life and I didn't know what that day but that idea of
the brain it's potential and with called neuroplasticity the Billy did it change as a function of the environment was going to become my life's work in science and that's what I want to tell you about today so I started out studying the structure in the brain called the hippocampus really important for long term memory but more recently have become interested in how exercise can actually improve
our learning memory cognition and I got interest in that not because I read about paper which we talked I went to the gym I when I turned forty this I don't want to get in the best shape of my life and went to the gym and the clouds like found that kept me coming back to the gym on a regular really regular basis with a class
called intense sake developed by this amazing fitness test instructor named Patricia Moreno in New York City now intend thought he is unique because it takes physical movements from kickboxer dance yoga and and %HESITATION martial arts but the unique part is that appears each physical movement with a positive spoken affirmation what I mean by that so in intense sake we don't just punch we say I am
strong now and the class so what happens is that you not only get that great aerobic exercise but because you're speaking out you actually get an increase in aerobic output it makes you feel great the bottom line was I got in great shape but there were two amazing benefits I noticed one was that I had this amazing motivation I felt like a million Bucks after I
came out of this class and %HESITATION I couldn't wait to go back and I thought my gosh Tricia Moreno is an amazing teacher to instill that kind of motivation and then I thought wait a second I'm a teacher I one of my students feel that way after my neuroanatomy class I come back to that in a second the second amazing benefit was that %HESITATION when I
went back to work at that when I started doing intense Adios writing on grass and I noticed that as I got more regular with the workouts my writing got easier I was able to make associations but I was able to focus better I thought this is this is amazing I I want to look at up north life litter to understand what's going on I looked at
the literature lot of new studies coming out as well as looking at some of the older studies that have led to our current understanding and when you look at those I found a very familiar name that name was Marian diamond so she was not only my undergraduate adviser but she was a real pioneer in North science research and really one of the only women working in
this field back in the late nineteen fifties and sixties when she discovered that when you raise rats in what she called an enriched environment with lots of toys to play with lots of other rock the play with and they run around a lot and you compare their brains to rats raised in what she called an impoverished environment with no toys just a couple of racks in
a in a small box what you can do is measure their brain you measure actually the thickness of that outer covering of the brain called the cortex and what she found is that the rats raised in rich environments had cortices that were actually thicker their Breen grew as a function of this enriched environment and later study showed that exercise the increased exercise at those rats were
getting because they were running around a lot more was all a big factor in that brain change so I thought okay this this is the area that I really want to get to know and as a professor at the best way to get to know what a topic area is to teach a class so I decided I'm gonna teach a class at NYU called can't exercise
change your brain and I decided because I got inspired to do this because of exercise that that would be great if I could bring exercise into the classroom and not only teach students about what exercises do into their brain but also teach them on a kind of help them experience what exercise felt like so I thought I could do that so I decided to go to
the gym and of course I loved intend floppy SO became a certified intense sake in stride and a certified fitness instructor I could tell you who so hard you know with teaching classes are threatened grant truth is it was really fun because I got to learn a whole new way to move a whole new way to motivate students and at Saint Thomas didn't reach shape thought
there's nothing better so I have this class I was teaching I was going to teach an hour of aerobic exercise I train for six months to be able to teach in front of this class I've never ton done this before but I thought I'd be fun so I teach in our group exercise an hour of intense sake followed by an hour have lecture on the effect
of exercise in the brain but then I realized my first study right there my students could be my subjects in my first study all I have to do with test them cognitively the beginning at the end of the semester and compare their performance two o'clock the didn't exercise and ask whether in fact edges life could improve their copy performance so that's exactly what I did and
before I tell you what our prediction was and what her results where I just want to take you back for a moment two September seventh two thousand nine which was the first day of this can emphasize change your brain class and it's feared in my memory mainly because I was really scared and nervous of I I give many many lectures I love giving lectures but this
one I was very nervous why because my goal was to actually try and inspired these kids to love exercise in the way the Patricia Marino inspired me but also inspire them to love neurobiology and brain and the brain plasticity the way that Marian diamond spike me so I had a pretty high bar and I was pretty scared to stand to step out in front of my
classroom but have to sit because students rule but scared too they'd never come to a class where the instructor came and work out clothes they never sweated in front of the professor and I got a lot of nervous laughter when I told them that they were going to have to say positive affirmations no not safe yell positive affirmations in class but I have to say it
was the most memorable first class that have ever taught the students really got into it okay there was a little bit of nervous laughter and a lot of giggling but they really got into it they were shouting the affirmations they were really going all out in the work out and the best thing was is that motivation and that inspiration oozed over into our %HESITATION academic our
lecture part and they remained engaged ask lots of questions it was a fantastic first class and a fantastic semester so what do we find so our prediction goes back to that structure that I thought was important for long term memory the hippocampus it goes back to the big campus because the hippocampus is one of only two brain structures that we're new brain cells new neurons are
bored so you and I have shiny new hippocampal cells being born in our hippocampus the cool thing is that experimental studies in animals have shown that increased aerobic exercise can actually enhance the birth of those new hippocampal neurons and make them live even longer so our prediction was that all this increase aerobic exercise in my NYU students would %HESITATION a would actually %HESITATION improve their learning
and memory improve their ability to learn new a new pieces of information and improve their own ability to retain those new pieces of information did we find that well we tested them on a whole battery of different cognitive tax and what we found was one significant improvement in my class and that improvement was in the ability to encode new long term memories what pass was that
it was a complicated because it's actually quite difficult task %HESITATION students were given a really complex %HESITATION geometrical image %HESITATION it with like an actor sketch image and then after a delay they would have to discriminate between that and just get image and one that looked very very similar to it my students got significantly faster and identifying the correct image that they saw before they're able
to separate out things other coming in your memory for example you're meeting lots of new people here today and us so you might be better if you exercise and come to my class at differentiating between the faces of different people that you meet today so that's a very very useful %HESITATION %HESITATION thing to be able to do so is this new what what is new about
this well it's new and exciting because I think we are certainly not the only people my lab is not the only loud interest in the effect of exercise on but the majority of the work has been done on looking at the facts of exercise in the elderly population why because cognitive decline is a major %HESITATION health issue in the elderly not to even mention Alice Hymers
deceits the exciting news in the elderly population is that increased aerobic exercise has clearly been shown to improve cognition so that's great but the idea there is that there's the client already so you have a little bit of room see improvement what about my healthy young very smart and why you Noel science majors there at the peak of their cognitive abilities ask are you an I
could exercise actually help us our studies suggest that yes they can't now I am were not only interested in exercise authority in learning memory cognition but there's a really exciting link to the topic of today's conference that is creativity and that comes from one of the most up one of the newest directions of study of the hippocampus we've known for a very very long time that
%HESITATION a exercise can improve on us right that they be campus is important for long term memory %HESITATION but recent studies have suggested that hippocampus is also important for creativity and imagination why because increase %HESITATION up because patients with hippocampal damage how significant impairments at being able to imagine new situation so we ask a patient with hippocampal damage describe for me a tropical beach scene they've
never been to a tropical beach they have a significant barely say anything about sand or water where the control subjects would be able to tell you about the white sand and the crown on the left hand with an umbrella in it all these different details so the idea is the hippocampus not only port for putting new associations in mind at that that help you remember the
events like this are in your path that will be in your past but also important for putting new concepts together in unique ways the basis of both a a both %HESITATION creativity and imagination so what we wanna do we haven't done this is to look at the effects of exercise not only learning memory but on increased creativity as well so what's the bottom line is the
bottom line is simple increased aerobic exercise can improve learning memory and possibly creativity what's more to know everybody wants a magic pill to get smarter well this isn't a pill and it comes with a lot more sweat then appeal but it can help you if free it happens it helps you every day and our goal over the next ten years is trying to figure out exactly
