The Effects of Exercise on the Brain and Cognition

Undergraduate / Graduate

The human body has evolved to be in motion, generating a complex interplay between physical and cognitive performance. During our evolutionary history, we cultivated cognitively demanding foraging patterns that relied on an expanded capacity for not only motor coordination and aerobic output, but also memory, spatial navigation, and executive function. Physiological adaptation to the stress of physical activity confers benefits to brain health and enhances the efficiency of neural circuits in ways that mirror its benefits to the musculoskeletal and cardiovascular systems. This course will explore the effects of exercise on learning and memory and investigate mechanisms proposed to underlie these benefits at the molecular, cellular, and systems levels. We will also consider exercise as medicine for maintaining metabolic and neurological health with age. This course is open to upper level undergraduate and graduate students and will focus on critical discussion of the primary literature. Each class will include a student-driven discussion of an original research article, a conversation about related findings, and an overview of upcoming topics. We will focus on studies that use animal models to discover the mechanisms behind the benefits of exercise to brain health and cognitive function and on randomized controlled trials in humans.