Juggling Enhances Brain Connections

Heidi Johansen-Berg, from University of Oxford (United Kingdom), and colleagues studied the effects of learning a new skill on the white matter of the brain. The researchers enlisted 49 young healthy adults and divided them into two equally-sized groups. One of the groups was given weekly training sessions in juggling for six weeks and asked to practice 30 minutes daily.  Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) was used to scan the subjects’ brains before and after the study period.  While there was a great variation in the ability of the volunteers to juggle after six weeks, all subjects showed changes in white matter, suggesting the effect was due to the time spent training and practicing.  The team observes that: “This provides, to the best of our knowledge, the first evidence for training-related changes in white-matter structure in the healthy human adult brain.”