Many studies show us how good sport is for the brain and its functions. However, there is also evidence that certain types of physical exercise could have a negative impact on some of our mental abilities. This is the case of a recent study carried out by Marianna D. Eddy and a group of collaborators from Massachusetts.
Ten volunteer soldiers between the ages of 18 and 30 participated in their work and underwent various tests. Two conditions were compared in which they had to perform mental exercises: a ‘weightless’ condition and another in which they had to load an M4 carbine (a common weapon in the army) while walking on a treadmill at a pace of 4.8 km / h. h for two hours. The weapon in question was prepared with a device so that the participants could respond to the cognitive tasks that were presented simultaneously to the walk. On the one hand, they were given an auditory go-no go task in which they had to respond to a specific sound and not respond when it was a different one. On the other hand, they were given a visual stimulus detection task .
The results, published in the journal PLoS ONE (2015), showed that soldiers performed worse on the auditory go-no go task in the walking condition when loading the weapon. It was observed that as time progressed and the participants became exhausted, they made more mistakes in the auditory attention task, responding more times to stimuli to which they should not respond. In the case of the visual attention task, they did not make more errors, but it was observed that their reaction times became longer the longer the walk was prolonged in the ‘loaded’ condition.
It is clear that it cannot be generalized and it is great that research continues to allow us to better understand what types of physical exercise are recommended to better take care of our brains.
Marisa Fernández, Senior Neuropsychologist, Unobrain
