Presenting… Genevieve Williams

On the importance of Exercise and how it helps develop the brain

• For decades, the educational and scientific communities seemed to believe that thinking was thinking and movement was movement, and each was separate.

• The first evidence of a linkage between mind and body was scattered in various proposals over the past century. (Schmahmann, 1997) Today, the evidence has become overwhelming and most neuroscientists agree that movement and cognition are powerfully connected.

• Movement can be an effective cognitive strategy to strengthen learning, improve memory and retrieval, and enhance learner motivation and morale (Jensen, 2005).

• The area of the brain most associated with motor control is the cerebellum.

• It takes up just one-tenth of the brain by volume, but contains nearly half of all its neurons.

• It has some 40 million nerve fibers that feed information from the cortex to the cerebellum, and they feed data back to the cortex (Middleton & Strick, 1994).

Cerebellum continued..• It is concerned with the task of coordinating movements. To

do this it must have continuous input:• From all the muscles, so their degree of contraction is known; • From the eyes, informing it about the environment and the relationship of the body

to it;• From the balancing mechanisms in the inner ears, conveying information about the

position of the head, and about accelerative forces experiencing the body;• From those parts of the brain concerned with movement (Brain, 2002).

Evidence…

• Oxygen is essential for brain function, and enhanced blood flow increases the amount of oxygen transported to the brain. Exercise is a reliable way to achieve this.

• Evidence from animal studies indicates that exercise influences gene expression to improve learning and memory (Tong, 2001). This improved pattern of gene expression enhances the encoding and transfer of data, synaptic structure, and the activity and plasticity of neurons. All of these processes facilitate learning.

• Doctors: Exercise Makes You Smarter - YouTube

Exercise continued…• The same way that exercise shapes up the

muscles, heart, lungs, and bones it also strengthens key areas of the brain. • It also feeds it brain derived neurotropic factors

or BDNF increasing neuron growth.(Sartori, 2011)

• Neural Development and Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor - YouTube

In the classroom• Exercise improves classroom behavior and academic performance

(Dwyer, 2001). Social Skills improved in the groups who exercised more.

• Students who are engaged in daily physical education programs

consistently show not just superior motor fitness, but better academic performance and a better attitude toward school than their students who do not participate in daily P.E.

Many play-oriented movements have the capacity to improve cognition. Here are a few:

• Exercise play (aerobics, running, chasing)• Rough-and-tumble play (soccer, football)• Solitary play (doing puzzles, object manipulation)• Outdoor learning activities (digging, observing insects)

Imagination and cognitive development are fostered by many types of play…

• Social and Emotional competence –

• During play children practice their power to self-direct, self-organize, exert self-control, and negotiate with others.

• Even when engaged in rough-and-tumble, the children involved demonstrate self control.

• Such experiences build confidence in deferring immediate gratification, persevering, and collaborating.

• Even when the play deals with hurtful themes such as death or aggression, role playing can help children with reality of such issues (Bergen, 2009).

Play continued…

•Affiliation-• Children who negotiate their play together fulfill their need for

affiliation.• How to enter into play successfully is a negotiation skill, and it

requires practice and the opportunity to be with peers.• The loner child who stands on the outside of the group and

observes may not have these skills (Bergen, 2009).

Play continued…

•Cognitive Development – • Children exercise their executive skills when planning pretense

scripts, using symbols in games, designing constructions, and organizing games with rules.

• In construction play with blocks, exploratory manipulation precedes the capacity to create new forms.

• These three dimensional constructions help older children develop the visual-spatial imagery that supports learning in mathematics, chemistry, and physics.

• Outdoor seasonal games that require eye-hand coordination and aiming- such as hopscotch, jump rope, tag, and baseball- also build the imagery that supports such concepts (Bergen, 2009).

Play continued…

• Imagination and Creativity – • Children dramatize roles and scenarios with animals, toy soldiers,

action figures, using themes such as “playing school” or “cops and robbers.”

• Children engage in such pretense trying on a sense of power and independence (Bergen, 2009).

Exercise…• Exercise play encourages younger children to take breaks from

being over loaded on cognitive tasks. Younger children have less mature cognitive capacities, so that the benefits of concentrating at a cognitively demanding task decrease after a shorter time than for older children (Moyles, 2005).

• Exercise makes kids smarter - YouTube

Losing recess…• In more and more schools there has been a decrease in time

aloted for physical education and exercise. • In this age of high stakes testing, physical activity has been

sacrificed for academic study.• When children are deprived of recess these actions could

cause counterproductive school performance, and should be integrated into learning (Brooks, 2008).

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Conclusion…• Evidence accrued from research conducted over the past few years

suggests that gains in children’s mental functioning due to exercise training are seen most clearly on tasks that involve executive functions.

• Executive functions are involved in performing goal-directed actions in complex stimulus environments, in which elements are constantly changing . Behaviors such as these have long been seen as important for children’s adaptive functioning.

• Exercise training programs may prove to be simple, yet important, methods of enhancing aspects of children’s mental functioning that are central to cognitive and social development.

• The review of research findings suggests that systematic exercise programs enhance the development of specific types of mental processing known to be important for meeting challenges encountered both in academics and throughout the lifespan (Tomporowsk, 2008).

Bibliography• *Bergen, D., & Fromberg, D. (2009). Play and Social Interaction in Middle Childhood.

Phi Delta Kappan, 90 (6). 426-430. Retrieved from Ebsco host.• *Brain. (2002) In The Royal Society of Medicine Health Encyclopedia. Retrieved from

http://www.credoreference.com/entry/rsmhealth/brain.• Brooks, R. (2008). Physical Exercise in School: Fitness for Both Body and Mind.

Retrieved from http://www.drrobertbrooks.com• Dwyer, T., Sallis, J., Blizzard, L., Lazarus, R., & Dean, K. (2001). Relation of Academic

Performance to Physical Activity and Fitness in Children. Pediatric Exercise Science, 13, 225-237.

• *Jensen, E. (2005). Teaching with the Brain In Mind. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Developments. 60-67.

• Middleton, F., & Strick, P. (1994). Anatomical Evidence for Cerebellar and Basil Ganglia Involvement In Higher Cognitive Function, Science, 266, 458-461.

• *Moyles, J. (2005). Excellence of Play. McGraw-Hill Education. Maidenhead: Open University Press. 15-26

• *Sartori, C.R., Vieira, A.S., Ferrari, E.M., Langone, F.F., Tongiorgi, E.E., &Parada, C.A. (2011) The Antidepressive Effect of the Physical Exercise Correlates with Increased Levels of Mature BDNF, and Pro BDNF Proteolytic Cleavage – Related Genes, p11 at tPA. Neuroscience, 180 9-18.

Bibliography continued…

• Schmahmann, J. (1997). The Cerebellum and Cognition. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

• *Tomporowsk, P.D., Davis, C.L., Miller, P.H. & Naglier, J.A. (2008). Exercise and Children’s Intelligence, Cognition, and Academic Achievement. Educational Psychology Review, 20 (2), 111-131. Retrieved from Ebsco host.

• Tong, L., Shen, H., Perreau, V.M., Balazas, R., & Cotman, C.W. (2001). Effects of Exercise on Gene-Expression Profile in the Rat Hippocampus. Neurobiology of Disease, 8(6), 1046-1056.