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“The mind is so powerful that we can set off the [stress] response just by imagining ourselves in a threatening situation,” writes Rockefeller University neuroscientist Bruce McEwen in his book The End of Stress as We Know It. In other words, we can think ourselves into a frenzy.
This is where the ripple effects of the body’s stress response can lead to full-blown mental disorders such as anxiety and depression, as well as high blood pressure, heart problems, and cancer. Chronic stress can even tear at the architecture of the brain.
cognitive flexibility improves after just one thirty-five-minute treadmill session at either 60 percent or 70 percent of maximum heart rate.
environmental deprivation could shrink the brain...In examining cats raised with one eye sewn shut, they found that the visual cortex was significantly smaller.
It turns out that moving our muscles produces proteins that travel through the bloodstream and into the brain, where they play pivotal roles in the mechanisms of our highest thought processes.
the point of exercise is to build and condition the brain.
imagining an act and doing it are not as different as they sound. When people close their eyes and visualize a simple object, such as the letter a, the primary visual cortex lights up, just as it would if the subjects were actually looking at the letter a. Brain scans show that in action and imagination many of the same parts of the brain are activated. That is why visualizing can improve performance.
And if maps could change, thought Merzenich, then there was reason to hope that people born with problems in brain map–processing areas—people with learning problems, psychological problems, strokes, or brain injuries—might be able to form new maps if he could help them form new neuronal connections, by getting their healthy neurons to fire together and wire together.
“…conversely, exercise unleashes a cascade of neurochemicals and growth factors that can reverse this process, physically bolstering the brain’s infrastructure. In fact, the brain responds like muscles do, growing with use, withering with inactivity. The neurons in the brain connect to one another through “leaves” on treelike branches, and exercise causes those branches to grow and bloom with new buds, thus enhancing brain function at a fundamental level.”