Wendy Suzuki

I tested students on a challenging memory task that required them to differentiate between similar-looking objects in memory. I found that one semester of increased exercise in my class improved their response times for correctly answered questions. In other words, they answered correctly more quickly if they were in my exercise class compared to if they were not in the exercise class, improvements in response times have been reported before, but this was unique because it was shown in a group of healthy young university students with just once a week of increased exercise. This suggests that if significant effects can be seen with this modest amount of exercise, then we might see even more striking effects if we got up to two to four times a week of increased exercise.

It [ stress ] actually makes certain brain areas smaller, people that have chronic stress have smaller parts of the brain that are important for memory. That part of the brain is called the hippocampus.

Each class was one hour of me teaching them aerobic exercise, followed by an hour and a half lecture discussion talking about and telling them about what exercise was doing to their brain.