Running Builds Brain Cells

In that a number of previous studies have suggested that regular exercise improves brain health, David J. Creer, from the National Institute on Aging (Maryland, USA), and colleagues studied the underlying mechanisms as to how exercise improves information processing.  The researchers prompted adult mice to uses running wheels, finding that doing so increased their number of brain cells and enabled them to perform better at spatial learning tests (as compared to mice that did not exercise).   The exercising mice were better able to tell the difference between the locations of two adjacent identical stimuli, an ability that the team found to be closely linked to an increase in new brain cell growth in the hippocampus.