- Wade Crum
- Lewisville, NC
- United States
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Are there any studies that look for a positive coorelation between fitness level and knowledge retention/learning abiility?
The main reason I ask this question is the old Mind, body, and soul trifecta. If we had all three working optimally would our cognitive performance be that much more effective?
Robert Winner 50+
An artice on the subject can be found: LIVESTRONG.COM titled: Does exercise improve learning in children.
I have never heard of combining exercise with learning but that does not mean that it could not work. As an example we "learn" and "employ" plays in sports. That would be somewhat the same.
Good luck and keep us informed of the findings.
All the best. Bob.
Fritzie Reisner 100+
I believe the days of nonstop sitting in the classroom are long gone, at least in k-8.
College students typically do not sit for long periods of time, because they have many fewer hours of class per day and typically need to hike or bike to get from one to the other.
I am less familiar with trends in in-class motion in the high school years.
Yuguo Zhang 100+
Wade Crum
There are studies that have found the coorelation. I am interested in changes in the classroom structure, based on this type of findings. I think sitting in a classroom all day is actually circumventing our learning potential. This is the subject matter I was really looking to expound upon.
I'll throw a few ideas out there to see if I can stir up some brainstorming. Walking class - lecture and interaction while hiking. Spinning class - spinning while watching a video about traveling through the human body. Martial Arts - learning new movements while while taking turns reading Mark Twain, or my favorite Jules Verne.
Lars Mews
Thats probably the reason why people say bodybuilders are dumb persons. Of course they are not dumber as anyone else, but in the moment of building their bodies they are, because in that specific time they can't solve too complex problems. It does not change if you just do moderate sports, in the moment of sportive activity your brain capacities sink like a ship, depending on the physical stress level slower or faster.
Whilst your Twain Method will work way better. It was already proven that imagined movements lead to faster progress in showing that move in a real situation. It is because before you move, you "think" this move, even not in the way it can always be called mindful thinking. But it does not work the other way round, that you think something from moving. The thought happens always before the move. Because a move takes energy, and its better to let the brain decide how much energy is used, because if too much is used, it has to switch to standby mode, sometimes for the rest of the day or even longer.
Ok, some say sport helps to transport more oxygen into the blood stream etc., and that will lead to better blood flow. But, brain capacity is not dependend on blood or oxygen, but on energy, what is sugar, fat etc.. Guess whats going down when doing sport? Yes, sugar, fat level etc.. And if you ever had starved you know how difficult thinking is in that stage. Or when your blood sugar gets low. While the oxygen level can be stretched, before everything shuts down it takes a very longt time. So sports are good for the muscles, but not for brain muscles at the same time.
Wade Crum
Lars Mews
Look at athletes after a match, if they really got to their limits, they will perform badly in interviews, evenif the questions are simple structured. If not on their limit, they gonna respond well, but not any better than before the match.
The energy you have goes either to the brain, or to the body. You can undergo training to balance that, for extreme situations, but not to find new solutions, but to access memory content of your brain. Thats for example what soldiers do, who have to deal with stressful situations, stressful for brain and body. But they do not "learn" in that situations, that is why they analyze the situation afterwards. Be sure if physical activity had positive effect on brain activity, a soldier would not lose a battle, because being in a life threatening situation is the highest physical stress.
Also, soldiers will have strongest synaptic activity, but often make false decions. That is why they train to focus on memory and also on mental relaxation.
Ask teachers what happens to classes who had sports before the class. Most of them will tell you that it is a waste of time, because most of the class is too tired and exhausted.
Best effects are shown when people slept enough and had a good meal afterwards. So to say, when the elementary needs were fulfilled. All life supporting tasks are done, all capacity can go into the brain parts that imagine (what is learning, you need to have a picture/image).
Sports also increase body temp. Brains do not like this, that is why cold places develop faster than hot places. When air condition is aviable, they do a large step-look at the history of nations, you gonna see the link.
Fritzie Reisner 100+
Once you find the research you seek, you could share what you have found and the link to the article and engage people effectively in discussion of the aspects that intrigue you.
You will find plenty of research, I expect, if you do such a search.
James Zhang 30+
I'm not entirely sure about the soul though, as I don't really know what it is.
Debra Smith 200+
James Zhang 30+
Basically I've learned recently is this.
We are mutating all the time in terms of body and mind, because we breathe oxygen all the time. Mutation by definition means change in your DNA. The DNA is some kind of code that defines how our body works. It's really just made of proteins. So what causes mutation? They are caused by "free radicals," which are unpaired electrons getting split (becoming unpaired) with its counterpart electron. So basically mutation happens when the electron pairs in your dna are split.
So what causes free radicals? I know two causes. Radiation, and Oxygen. While I do not know the full details, here's why I think it makes sense to me. Radiation is basically really high frequency waves, in other words, lots of shaking and vibrations. So perhaps radiation will shake the electron pairs enough to the point where they split. That's what I think is really happening, but I'm not entirely sure myself, I was just talking with a friend lol. Then as for the Oxygen, I know that there is some kind of chemical reaction that occurs that causes oxygen to decay our brain, just like it does to rotten apples. That chemical reaction results in free radicals in the dna. So oxygen naturally causes mutation.
So then there is nutrition, which is the food intake. There are special nutrients that effectively give the brain new electrons to reform the electron pairs. That is why nutrition is important, and that's why the food you eat is important. So in a way it affects your DNA as well.
So the brain thus depends on oxygen and nutrition. There are also special nutrients that makes certain parts of your brain more active. But if your brain is deteriorated by the oxygen, you can eventually mutate enough to naturally get cancer.
So one way to keeping the body and mind healthy is nutrition and exercise. Exercise is basically more oxygen to brain. Alzheimer's is said to be excess deterioration. Which could explain why athletes get it a lot.