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How Exercise Strengthens

Your Brain
Physical activity improves cognitive and
mental health in all sorts of ways. Here’s why,
and how to reap the benefits.

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Lucy Jones

By Dana G. Smith

April 2, 2024

Growing up in the Netherlands, Henriette van

Praag had always been active, playing sports
and riding her bike to school every day. Then,
in the late-1990s, while working as a staff
scientist at the Salk Institute for Biological
Studies in San Diego, she discovered that
exercise can spur the growth of new brain
cells in mature mice. After that, her approach
to exercise changed.

“I started to take it more seriously,” said Dr.

van Praag, now an associate professor of
biomedical science at Florida Atlantic
University. Today, that involves doing CrossFit
and running five or six miles several days a
week.

Whether exercise can cause new neurons to

grow in adult humans — a feat previously
thought impossible, and a tantalizing prospect
to treat neurodegenerative diseases — is still
up for debate. But even if it’s not possible,
physical activity is excellent for your brain,
improving mood and cognition through “a
plethora” of cellular changes, Dr. van Praag
said.

What are some of the benefits,

specifically?
Exercise offers short-term boosts in cognition.
Studies show that immediately after a bout of
physical activity, people perform better on
tests of working memory and other executive
functions. This may be in part because
movement increases the release of
neurotransmitters in the brain, most notably
epinephrine and norepinephrine.

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“These kinds of molecules are needed for

paying attention to information,” said Marc
Roig, an associate professor in the School of
Physical and Occupational Therapy at McGill
University. Attention is essential for working
memory and executive functioning, he added.

The neurotransmitters dopamine and

serotonin are also released with exercise,
which is thought to be a main reason people
often feel so good after going for a run or a
long bike ride.

The brain benefits really start to emerge,

though, when we work out consistently over
time. Studies show that people who work out
several times a week have higher cognitive
test scores, on average, than people who are
more sedentary. Other research has found that
a person’s cognition tends to improve after
participating in a new aerobic exercise
program for several months.

Dr. Roig added the caveat that the effects on

cognition aren’t huge, and not everyone
improves to the same degree. “You cannot
acquire a super memory just because you
exercised,” he said.

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Physical activity also benefits mood. People

who work out regularly report having better
mental health than people who are sedentary.
And exercise programs can be effective at
treating people’s depression, leading some
psychiatrists and therapists to prescribe
physical activity. The Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention’s recommendation of
150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity or 75
minutes of vigorous aerobic activity per week
is a good benchmark.

Perhaps most remarkable, exercise offers

protection against neurodegenerative
diseases. “Physical activity is one of the health
behaviors that’s shown to be the most
beneficial for cognitive function and reducing
risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia,” said
Michelle Voss, an associate professor of
psychological and brain sciences at the
University of Iowa.

How does exercise do all that?

It starts with the muscles. When we work out,
they release molecules that travel through the
blood up to the brain. Some, like a hormone
called irisin, have “neuroprotective” qualities
and have been shown to be linked to the
cognitive health benefits of exercise, said
Christiane Wrann, an associate professor of
medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital
and Harvard Medical School who studies
irisin. (Dr. Wrann is also a consultant for a
pharmaceutical company, Aevum
Therapeutics, hoping to harness irisin’s effects
into a drug.)

Good blood flow is essential to obtain the

benefits of physical activity. And conveniently,
exercise improves circulation and stimulates
the growth of new blood vessels in the brain.
“It’s not just that there’s increased blood flow,”
Dr. Voss said. “It’s that there’s a greater
chance, then, for signaling molecules that are
coming from the muscle to get delivered to the
brain.”

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Once these signals are in the brain, other

chemicals are released locally. The star of the
show is a hormone called brain-derived
neurotrophic factor, or B.D.N.F., that is
essential for neuron health and creating new
connections — called synapses — between
neurons. “It’s like a fertilizer for brain cells to
recover from damage,” Dr. Voss said. “And
also for synapses on nerve cells to connect
with each other and sustain those
connections.”

A greater number of blood vessels and

connections between neurons can actually
increase the size of different brain areas. This
effect is especially noticeable in older adults
because it can offset the loss of brain volume
that happens with age. The hippocampus, an
area important for memory and mood, is
particularly affected. “We know that it shrinks
with age,” Dr. Roig said. “And we know that if
we exercise regularly, we can prevent this
decline.”

Exercise’s effect on the hippocampus may be

one way it helps protect against Alzheimer’s
disease, which is associated with significant
changes to that part of the brain. The same
goes for depression; the hippocampus is
smaller in people who are depressed, and
effective treatments for depression, including
medications and exercise, increase the size of
the region.

What kind of exercise is best for

your brain?
The experts emphasized that any exercise is
good, and the type of activity doesn’t seem to
matter, though most of the research has
involved aerobic exercise. But, they added,
higher-intensity workouts do appear to confer
a bigger benefit for the brain.

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Improving your overall cardiovascular fitness

level also appears to be key. “It’s dose-
dependent,” Dr. Wrann said. “The more you
can improve your cardiorespiratory fitness,
the better the benefits are.”

Like Dr. van Praag, Dr. Voss has incorporated

her research into her life, making a concerted
effort to engage in higher intensity exercise.
For example, on busy days when she can’t fit
in a full workout, she’ll seek out hills to bike up
on her commute to work. “Even if it’s a little,”
she said, “it’s still better than nothing.”

Dana G. Smith is a Times reporter covering personal

health, particularly aging and brain health. More about
Dana G. Smith

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