首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
How Exercise Makes You Smarter Exercise does more than build muscles and help prevent heart disease. New science shows that
How Exercise Makes You Smarter Exercise does more than build muscles and help prevent heart disease. New science shows that
admin
2012-06-20
28
问题
How Exercise Makes You Smarter
Exercise does more than build muscles and help prevent heart disease. New science shows that it also boosts brainpower — and may offer hope in the battle against Alzheimer (痴呆症).
The stereotype of the "dumb jock" has never sounded right to Charles Hillman. A jock himself, he plays hockey four times a week, but when he isn’t body-checking his opponents on the ice, he’s giving his mind a comparable workout in his neuroscience and kinesiology lab at the University of Illinois. Recently he started wondering if there was a vital and overlooked link between brawn and brains — if long hours at the gym could somehow build up not just muscles, but minds. With colleagues, he started an experiment. He rounded up 259 Illinois third-and fifth-graders, measured their body mass index and put them through classic PE routines: the "sit-and-reach", a brisk run and timed push-ups and sit-ups. Then he checked their physical abilities against their math and reading scores on a statewide standardized test. Sure enough, on the whole, the kids with the fittest bodies were the ones with the fittest brains, even when factors such as socioeconomic status were taken into account. Sports, Hillman concluded, might indeed be boosting the students’ intellect.
Hillman’s study, which will be published later this year, isn’t definitive enough to stand alone. But it doesn’t have to: it is part of a recent and rapidly growing movement in science showing that exercise can make people smarter. Other scientists have found that vigorous exercise can cause nerve cells to form dense, interconnected webs that make the brain run faster and more efficiently. And there are clues that physical activity can stay away from the beginnings of Alzheimer’s disease, ADHD and other cognitive disorders. No matter your age, it seems, a strong, active body is crucial for building a strong, active mind.
Some scientists have always suspected as much, although they have not been able to prove it. Now, however, armed with brain-scanning tools and a sophisticated understanding of biochemistry, researchers are realizing that the mental effects of exercise are far more profound and complex than they once thought. The process starts in the muscles. When the exercise is available, the muscle sends out chemicals, including a protein called IGF-1 that travels through the bloodstream, across the blood-brain barrier and into the brain itself. And then the brain issues orders to ramp up production of several chemicals, including one called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. It fuels almost all the activities that lead to higher thought.
With regular exercise, the body builds up its levels of BDNF, and the brain’s nerve cells start to branch out, join together and communicate with each other in new ways. This is the process that underlies learning: every change in the junctions between brain cells signifies a new fact or skill that’s been picked up for future use. BDNF makes that process possible. Brains with more of it have a greater capacity for knowledge. On the other hand, says UCLA neuroscientist Fernando G6mez-Pinilla, a brain that’s low on BDNF shuts itself off to new information.
Most people maintain fairly constant levels of BDNF in adulthood. But as they age, their individual neurons (神经) slowly start to die off. Until the mid-’90s, scientists thought the loss was permanent — that the brain couldn’t make new nerve cells to replace the dead ones. But animal studies over the last decade have overturned that assumption, showing that "neurogenesis" (神经发生) in some parts of the brain can be induced easily with exercise. Last week’s study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, extended that principle to humans for the first time. After working out for three months, all the subjects appeared to regain new neurons. This, too, might be BDNF at work, transforming stem cells into full-grown, functional neurons. "It was extremely exciting to see this exercise effect in humans for the first time," says Scott Small, a Columbia University Medical Center neurologist who co-authored the study with Salk Institute neurobiologist Fred Gage. "In terms of trying to understand what it means, the field is just exploding."
As far as scientists know, the new neurons created by exercise are produced in only one place: the dentate gyrus, an area that controls learning and memory. This region helps the brain match names to faces — one of the first skills to erode as we age. New neurons can’t grow throughout the rest of the brain. But other regions benefit from exercise in many secondary ways. Blood volume, like brain volume, increases with exercise. Active adults have less inflammation in the brain. They also have fewer "little possibility of strokes that can impair cognition without the person even knowing", says Kristine Yaffe, a neuroscientist from University of California. Still other researchers have found that athletes have more cells that support neurons and increase neurotransmitters after they’re used to send messages from cell to cell. And even the levels of those neurotransmitters are higher in people who exercise frequently.
Unlike neurogenesis, which can take weeks to occur, most of these additional effects appear almost immediately. Get off the treadmill (踏车) after a half-hour workout, says Hillman, and "within 48 minutes" your brain will be in better shape. But alas, these benefits are somewhat transient (短暂的). Like weight, mental fitness has to be maintained. New neurons, and the connections between them, will stick around for years, but within a month of inactivity, "they will shrink down, and then the neurons don’t function as well anymore," says William Greenough, a psychologist at the University of Illinois. Let your body go, then, and your brain will follow.
To keep the effects, you’ve got to keep working out. "If you’re thinking that by exercising at age 20 you’re going to have some effect on what you’re like at age 70," Greenough adds, you’d better be willing to commit to 50 years of hitting the gym. Unless, that is, you’re a kid. Most studies of exercise and cognition have focused on older people — the folks who are just starting to worry that their minds aren’t what they used to be — but the effects of physical exertion on the brain aren’t limited to that group at all. In fact, exercise probably has "a more long-lasting effect on children’s brains that are still developing," says Phil Tomporowski, a professor of exercise science at the University of Georgia. In kids, as in adults, the brain reaps many benefits from exercise. This won’t surprise parents of kids with ADHD, many of whom already use physical activity as a substitute or supplement for drugs.
Charles Hillman got a conclusion from his experiment that exercise can______.
选项
A、keep students healthy
B、improve students’ intellect
C、prevent students from disease
D、help students build muscles
答案
B
解析
根据题干中的人名Charles Hillman可将本题出处定位到第二段,再根据conclusion(结论)一词可断定答案应在较往后的内容中查找。第二段讲Charles Hillman开展了一项研究,并且得出结论,即末句(体育运动也许确实可以增加学生的智力)。题干中的conclusion对应文中的concluded。题干中的exercise对应文中的Sports,[B]中的improve students’intellect对应文中的boosting the students’intellect,故答案为[B]。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/mdf7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
AmericansandFoodAnunusualbuttimelycartoonrecentlyappearedinthelocalnewspaper.Thesinglepanelshowedagravel-
A、Exercisingtheentirebody.B、Havingyourbloodpressuretaken.C、Losingweightpriortoexercise.D、Breathingdeeplybeforee
A、Bytalkingtoanexpert.B、Byreadinganarticle.C、Byattendinganexerciseclass.D、Bylisteningtotheradio.B
TheenormousgrowthofAmericaneconomyhasbeen【C1】______tomanyfactors.ThesizeoftheUnitedStatesandits【C2】______resour
DINK.’DoubleIncomeNoKids’,【S1】______tofamiliesthatconsistofahusbandandwifewhobothwork.Thenumberofsuchfamilie
Were____________(如果他们在我们出发前到达的话)thedayaftertomorrow,weshouldhaveawonderfuldinnerparty.
Cheatingisnothingnew.Buttoday,educationandadministrationsarefindingthatinstancesofacademicdishonestyonthepart
Cheatingisnothingnew.Buttoday,educationandadministrationsarefindingthatinstancesofacademicdishonestyonthepart
TheSixthSenseWhenyouwereachild,didyoueverwonderhowyourmotherknewwhenyouwerewritingonthewallwithcrayo
A、Hedecidedtoattendextrahistoryclasses.B、Hehopestomeetthewomanatthestudentcenter.C、Hewastoosicktoworkonh
随机试题
Humancloning(克隆)technologycouldbeusedtoreverseheartattacks.Scientistsbelievethattheymaybeabletotreatheartat
对抗铜绿假单胞菌感染有效的药物为
关于急性渗出性心包炎的叙述,错误的是
A:休息,低盐饮食,限制入水量,补充蛋白质,给利尿剂B:休息,高热量高蛋白饮食,保肝治疗C:休息,高热量限蛋白饮食,输入支链氨基酸D:休息,禁食,积极补足血容量并采取止血措施E:休息,控制输液量,纠正电解质紊乱,限制蛋
甲系某品牌汽车制造商,发现已投入流通的某款车型刹车系统存在技术缺陷,即通过媒体和销售商发布召回该款车进行技术处理的通知。乙购买该车,看到通知后立即驱车前往丙销售公司,途中因刹车系统失灵撞上大树,造成伤害。下列哪些说法是正确的?(卷三2011年真题试卷第67
作为推荐使用的《建设工程施工合同(示范文本)》由()部分组成,并附有三个附件。
背景资料:某公司中标给水厂扩建升级工程,主要内容有新建臭氧接触池和活性炭吸附池。其中臭氧接触池为半地下钢筋混凝土结构,混凝土强度等级C40,抗渗等级P8,臭氧接触池的平面有效尺寸为23.3×21.5m,在宽度方向上设有6道隔墙、间距1~3m,隔墙一端与池
税收负担转嫁的形式有()。
Thoughleftandrightalikedeclarethatbirthshouldn’tdeterminewhereyougotouniversity,afiercedebatestillragesabout
ScientistsDevelopWaysofDetectingHeartAttackGermanresearchershave(1)anewgenerationofdefibrillatorsandearlywarn
最新回复
(
0
)