Skylar J Brooks, Sean M Parks, Catherine Stamoulis, Cerebral Cortex, 31(10), October 2021, 4840–4852,
Research involving close to 6,000 young children aged 9 to 10 found that physical activity is more beneficial for brain health than previously known.
According to the study by Boston Children’s Hospital, no matter the extent of physical activity, children could benefit from all forms of exercise, leading to organizational properties of the children’s brain circuits.
The 5,955 child participants examined were part of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development cohort. We estimated significant positive effects of regular physical activity on network connectivity, efficiency, robustness and stability (P ≤ 0.01), and on local topologies of attention, somatomotor, frontoparietal, limbic, and default-mode networks (P < 0.05), which support extensive processes, from memory and executive control to emotional processing. Additional mediation analyses suggested that physical activity could also modulate network topologies leading to better control of food intake, appetite and satiety, and ultimately lower BMI. Thus, regular physical activity may have extensive positive effects on the development of the functional connectome, and may be critical for improving the detrimental effects of unhealthy weight on cognitive health.
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