“No matter what the media says…you need both physical and mental exercise”

Answer by Dr. Eliz­a­beth Zelinski:
The research at the time showed that exer­cise improved super­vi­so­ry func­tions like work­ing mem­o­ry and exec­u­tive func­tion and pro­cess­ing speed. These are dif­fer­ent from, say, remem­ber­ing a list of words. It’s what was miss­ing from the pub­lished work. I had noticed it because the ear­ly exer­cise research in the 1970s and 80s gen­er­al­ly failed to improve mem­o­ry. There is some recent evi­dence that spa­tial mem­o­ry is improved with aer­o­bic exer­cise, but it’s only from one lab. I pub­lished a meta-analy­sis in 2012 com­par­ing gains in untrained task per­for­mance after tak­ing out the effect of prac­tice in doing sim­i­lar tasks at pretest and posttest, for both aer­o­bic exer­cise and cog­ni­tive train­ing inter­ven­tions. About 4000 peo­ple in 42 stud­ies were sum­ma­rized. Untrained task improve­ment was sim­i­lar for both types of inter­ven­tions, so phys­i­cal exer­cise isn’t bet­ter, no mat­ter what the media says. As the Sharp­Brains Guide says, though, you need both for health.