Profound: July 2020 Archives

'It's a Superpower': How Walking Makes Us Healthier, Happier and Brainier

"'Our sensory systems work at their best when they're moving about the world,' says [Neuroscientist Shane] O'Mara. He cites a 2018 study that tracked participants' activity levels and personality traits over 20 years, and found that those who moved the least showed malign personality changes, scoring lower in the positive traits: openness, extraversion and agreeableness. There is substantial data showing that walkers have lower rates of depression, too. And we know, says O'Mara, 'from the scientific literature, that getting people to engage in physical activity before they engage in a creative act is very powerful. My notion - and we need to test this - is that the activation that occurs across the whole of the brain during problem-solving becomes much greater almost as an accident of walking demanding lots of neural resources.'

"O'Mara's enthusiasm for walking ties in with both of his main interests as a professor of experimental brain research: stress, depression and anxiety; and learning, memory and cognition. 'It turns out that the brain systems that support learning, memory and cognition are the same ones that are very badly affected by stress and depression,' he says. 'And by a quirk of evolution, these brain systems also support functions such as cognitive mapping,' by which he means our internal GPS system. But these aren't the only overlaps between movement and mental and cognitive health that neuroscience has identified."