How to improve cognitive performance?
A recurring if not the most frequent question raised by students or other audience is about the exercises or tips to improve one’s cognitive performance. The question may arise in different contexts: study, examination, preventing cognitive decline related to aging, improving one’s quality of life.
Cognition is often referred to as the set of superior cognitive functions involved in intellectual tasks, especially attention, concentration, working-memory, long-term memory, planning, optimal decision-making but it actually also includes emotional processing, motivational control and mood stability - that are absolutely essential the latter mental functions to work properly. These functions allow to deploy adapted behaviours, both flexible and efficient in terms of objectives reached.
My recommendation may sound surprising, as it has nothing to do with hard cognitive training. This may of course be useful, but there are more fundamental mechanisms that need to be optimised first and that have been shown to be extremely efficient.
It may depend on your gender but basically the answer is: exercise, exercise, exercise, eat healthy, ensure to have a regular sleep pattern, avoid socially stressful situations, walf in nature if you can - exactly as if you were a professional athlete. Do not expect any improvement of your cognitive performance or wellbeing with a zero exercise lifestyle, drinking excessive alcohol and coffee, smoking, eating junk or processed food, a messy sleep pattern, and relationships mostly based on conflicts or competition. Improving an unhealthy lifestyle may be sufficient to get better cognitive skills.
For some (maybe cultural) reason, we have many prejudices regarding intellectual tasks and physical tasks and how they recruit the brain. Bearing in mind some facts may help to update some false beliefs. First, moving and getting ready to move may correspond to the half or the third of the brain, depending on the criteria you apply. Second, the brain has the highest metabolic activity among all organs. Third, it is reciprocally connected to the whole body - anatomically by nerves and/or chemically through neuropeptides, neuro-hormones or neuromodulators. As such, it is directly impacted by our global metabolic activity, by what we eat, breathe, drink and the level of stress of we are experiencing, and of course by the quality of sleep, as sleep is essential for the metabolism itself (in the body in general) and for the regulation of neuronal activity.
Today I am only going to refer to a few studies that investigated the impact of exercise on cognitive functions and performance in healthy subjects- but note that there exist clinical studies assessing the efficiency of exercise therapies in different types of dementia or neurodegenerative conditions [5].
The general trend of studies made in randomised healthy population is that Sport (Physical Activity or Aerobic Exercise) improves cognition - cognition being here understood as the actual scores in tasks recruiting the executive functions (see here for definition) and attention, at all ages and conditions [1][2][3][4][5]. A recent study carried out in inactive late-middle age adults has observed that a 12 weeks Aerobic Exercise training programme significantly improved the cognitive skills score of participants. Adding a cognitive training programme to the physical training did not give better results, and a cognitive training alone - without any physical training - did not give results at all [3].
That being said, the benefits of a particular type training appear to depend on gender. Cardiorespiratory exercise - typically called “cardio training” or aerobic exercise - are significantly beneficial in men, but not in women. This type of training might thus be particularly recommended to men as it would preserve from neurodegeneration and cognitive aging [2].
Part of the neuroprotective benefits of sport are the regulation of the mood and of other biological functions such as sleep and appetite. The molecular pathways involved in this global effect of physical activity are still under investigation - it is still quite a burgeoning, although very promising, new line of research.
I will make a lecture on this topic for those interested. See below some papers - most of them are easy to read even for non scientific audience.
References:
[1] Castells-Sánchez A, Roig-Coll F, Dacosta-Aguayo R, Lamonja-Vicente N, Sawicka AK, Torán-Monserrat P, Pera G, Montero-Alía P, Heras-Tebar A, Domènech S, Via M, Erickson KI, Mataró M. Exercise and Fitness Neuroprotective Effects: Molecular, Brain Volume and Psychological Correlates and Their Mediating Role in Healthy Late-Middle-Aged Women and Men. Front Aging Neurosci. 2021 Mar 8;13:615247. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2021.615247. PMID: 33776741; PMCID: PMC7989549.
[2] Castells-Sánchez A, Roig-Coll F, Lamonja-Vicente N, Torán-Monserrat P, Pera G, Montero P, Dacosta-Aguayo R, Bermudo-Gallaguet A, Bherer L, Erickson KI, Mataró M. Sex Matters in the Association between Physical Activity and Fitness with Cognition. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2021 Jun 1;53(6):1252-1259. doi: 10.1249/MSS.0000000000002570. PMID: 33394900.
[3] Roig-Coll F, Castells-Sánchez A, Lamonja-Vicente N, Torán-Monserrat P, Pera G, García-Molina A, Tormos JM, Montero-Alía P, Alzamora MT, Dacosta-Aguayo R, Soriano-Raya JJ, Cáceres C, Erickson KI, Mataró M. Effects of Aerobic Exercise, Cognitive and Combined Training on Cognition in Physically Inactive Healthy Late-Middle-Aged Adults: The Projecte Moviment Randomized Controlled Trial. Front Aging Neurosci. 2020 Oct 29;12:590168. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2020.590168. PMID: 33192485; PMCID: PMC7664521.
[4] Bidzan-Bluma I, Lipowska M. Physical Activity and Cognitive Functioning of Children: A Systematic Review. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2018;15(4):800. Published 2018 Apr 19. doi:10.3390/ijerph15040800
[5] Mahalakshmi B, Maurya N, Lee SD, Bharath Kumar V. Possible Neuroprotective Mechanisms of Physical Exercise in Neurodegeneration. Int J Mol Sci. 2020;21(16):5895. Published 2020 Aug 16. doi:10.3390/ijms21165895
