Phys Ed: Your Brain on Exercise
By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS (July 7, 2010, 12:01 AM)
In the late 1990s, Dr. Fred Gage and his colleagues at the Laboratory of Genetics at the Salk Institute in San Diego elegantly proved that human and animal brains produce new brain cells (a process called neurogenesis) and that exercise increases neurogenesis. ...
[A]t Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago[,] ... scientists have been manipulating the levels of bone-morphogenetic protein or BMP in the brains of laboratory mice. ... In the brain, BMP has been found to contribute to the control of stem cell divisions. ... [A]dult stem cells, ... [when] given the right impetus, divide and differentiate into either additional stem cells or baby neurons. As we age, these stem cells ... don’t divide as readily and can slump into a kind of cellular sleep. It’s BMP that acts as the soporific, says Dr. Jack Kessler, the chairman of neurology at Northwestern and senior author of many of the recent studies. The more active BMP and its various signals are in your brain, the more inactive your stem cells become and the less neurogenesis you undergo. ...
But exercise countermands some of the numbing effects of BMP, Dr. Kessler says. In work at his lab, mice given access to running wheels had about 50 percent less BMP-related brain activity within a week. They also showed a notable increase in Noggin, a beautifully named brain protein that acts as a BMP antagonist. The more Noggin in your brain, the less BMP activity exists and the more stem cell divisions and neurogenesis you experience. ...
In the comment thread at the article, someone asked why high school and college jocks are typically (and sometimes rightly) viewed as "dumber" than non-athletes. One person noted this story is addressing neurogenesis in older adults, not teenagers and young adults, so the 'intellectual' benefits of exercise in youth are not to the point. For my part, I would say that the reason jocks are typically viewed as being stupider than non-athletes rests, first, on a real deficit and, second, on a misconception about intelligence. First, committed athletes invest vastly more time in their training and competitions than non-athletes so as a matter of fact they will have less time to study. This will of course lead to scholastic deficits in the long run in an average population.
The second reason for the perception of jocks as "dumb" is based on a narrow conception of intelligence. Far be it from me to undermine or trivialize the benefits of 'pure' intellectual study and scholastic discipline. Despite my love for sports, I am a nerd and scholar at heart. At the same time, however, I recognize that somatic intelligence is not something that can be measured by standard scholastic assessment tests, which is why jocks perform more stupidly on those tests. Their "version" of intelligence is not really being tested, or, when it is being tested, it is taken to be "just a game." Broadly defined, intelligence is the ability of an agent to deploy her bodily and environmental resources to interact with and navigate among other bodies and environments. The older people get, the more adept they become at navigating people and environments with mere verbal exertion. Yet clearly athletic excellence is a form of intelligence, since the athlete devises how to extract more energy from her environment, teammates, coaches, and opponents (viz., training exercises, motivational cooperation, execution of complex orders, adapting strategically to novel challenges, etc.).
Intellectual prowess is a form of power, since it allows the agent to generate information--to bring the world into a new coherent order--by the mere power of speech. Yet physical prowess is an analogous form of power, since it not only allows the agent to respond intelligently and creatively to new developments in the world but makes him into a real world-changing agent. According to Arnold in The Education, for years no one could break the 499-pound barrier in the bench press. Peoepl just assumed it was an inherent biological limit for humans. But then one day, a Russian fellow bench pressed 501 pounds, and in the following months and years, the bench press record kept getting higher and higher. For the past few years, Ryan Kennelly has held the world record, first with 1050 pounds in 2007 and then 1074 pounds in 2008. The point is, the first time anyone ever bench-pressed 500 pounds it altered humanity's entire sense of human potential and of coherent biological possibility. Speech, likewise, frequently alters mankind's entire conception of possibility in the span of a few syllables (for better or worse). Speech is certainly the more marvelous "muscular" act, since its ultimate effects are so much greater than its basic mechanical exertion. Even so, encountering your own weaknesses stimulates self-reflection and problem-solving analysis on a broad scale, and overcoming your physical weaknesses promotes mental audacity and extrapolation on a broad scale.
Speaking of self-reflection, I must note that, contrary to popular belief, athletes possess a stunning amount of that coveted philosophical virtue called self-knowledge. "What are my weak spots in the gym––and in life?" "What are my common mistakes on the field––and off?" "What are my mental illusions that keep me from excelling?" "Where do I fit in the grand scale of the human race?" "What are the limits of human performance--and how far from them am I?" "What character flaws of mine tear down our team's unity and efficiency?" "What chinks in my opponent's armor do I see and how can I--I myself--exploit them for glory?" These are all deeply philosophical questions, touching on ethics, consciousness and perception, philosophy of action, philosophy of biology, and so on. Having an intimate knowledge of your own muscles--your own self––is a genuine component of intelligence, and a lot rarer than you might think. (Go ahead, try flexing your lat muscles, one by one, at will.) A intimate awareness of one's body qua body is as integral to certain dimensions of intelligence––dynamic engagement with the real world––as having a good sense of your tongue and throat muscles is to speaking your mother tongue well and learning a foreign language well. The key to all-round intelligence is to link the modes of athletic discipline and development to every area of life. Meanwhile, the hound of humility prowls at every turn.
No comments:
Post a Comment