Does moderate exercise improve learning ability?

Question

Heavy exercise temporarily depletes glycogen, a short term energy store, from the brain (after doing so from the muscles and liver). However, light exercise has a positive effect on learning ability. For example, in this article about a school in Naperville it is claimed that having gym class as the first class in the morning improves the learning abilities of the pupils.

Sound body, sound mind has long been the accepted wisdom.

But schools have traditionally promoted brains and brawn separately.

Not so at Naperville Central High School west of Chicago. Here the kids who struggle with math and reading go to gym class first.

"What we're trying to do here is jump start their brain," says Paul Zientarski, chairman of the Physical Education Department at Naperville.

Does moderate exercise correlate with learning ability and memory retention?

Answer 1

From Exercise and the brain: something to chew on:

Evidence is accumulating that exercise has profound benefits for brain function.
Physical activity improves learning and memory in humans and animals. Moreover, an active lifestyle might prevent or delay loss of cognitive function with aging or neurodegenerative disease.

Nutrition and exercise affect neuronal signaling pathways important for synaptic plasticity and cognitive function.

BDNF and glutamate act at receptors that regulate calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK)/extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) systems.

Flavanols might activate similar signaling pathways, raising the possibility that natural compounds have a selective neuronal receptor (? indicates a hypothetical receptor ).

BDNF also influences the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt and the FOXO subfamily of forkhead transcription factors, elevating expression of genes important for learning and memory.

From Exercise is Brain Food [Abstract only ]:

In animal models, physical activity enhances memory and learning, promotes neurogenesis and protects the nervous system from injury and neurodegenerative disease.

Neurotrophins, endogenous proteins that support brain plasticity likely mediate the beneficial effects of exercise on the brain.

In clinical studies, exercise increases brain volume in areas implicated in executive processing, improves cognition in children with cerebral palsy and enhances phonemic skill in school children with reading difficulty.

In 2009 CBC News did a piece (19 min video )

about City Park High School in Saskatoon (this is an alternative school for those with learning difficulties ), that put treadmills and exercise bikes into a math classroom.

Well, the cardio equipment went in the classroom in February, and by June, pretty much all the kids had jumped a full grade in reading, writing and math.

Exercise causes the brain to create more nerve cells (neurogenesis), makes those nerves stronger, and helps them withstand stress, and improves neurotransmitter function, which helps the brain work better.

Dr. John Ratey, one of the key researchers in this area, noted not only improvements in those with ADHD, but also in those with bipolar disorder and schitzophrenia as well.

[via Trusted.MD]

More:

• Parenting Science - The cognitive benefits of exercise for children
• The Franklin Institute - Physical Exercise for a Better Brain
• High impact running improves learning [Abstract]
• Be smart, exercise your heart: exercise effects on brain and cognition [Abstract]
• Mild forced treadmill exercise enhances spatial learning in the aged rat [Abstract]

Answer 2

This article in Yale Daily News indicates that exercise increases the expression of the BDNF protein which stimulates learning and increases plasticity of the brain. Apparently this is mostly relevant for short term memory but also has some clear positive effects on long term memory. Also Exercise: a behavioral intervention to enhance brain health and plasticity and Exercise Improves Memory Acquisition and Retrieval in the Y-Maze Task (cached PDF). Most articles I find about it refer to experiments on mice but the PDF's abstract indicates human experiments too.

Conclusion is that some regular exercise increases long and short term memory.