Working Out 4 Hours After Studying May Help Your Brain Remember Stuff

Here’s your new study routine: Hit the books.

Wait a little while. Then, hit the gym.

New research suggests that physical exercise can help people retain information if it happens at the right time  namely, a few hours after you learn the info, when new memories are getting stabilized in your brain.

The study’s authors, who include researchers from Scotland’s University of Edinburgh and the Netherlands’ Radboud University, divided 72 people into groups and then had them all complete a memory task.

Immediately afterward, one group of participants were asked to exercise on spinning bikes for half an hour.

 Another group were asked to wait four hours and then exercise. A third group weren’t asked to exercise at all.

Two days later, the participants returned to the lab for a follow-up memory test. The people who’d waited four hours and then exercised performed about 10 percent better on this new test than people in the other groups.

The boost in memory was modest, but the findings offer initial evidence that properly timed physical exercise can improve memory retention, the researchers say. The exact time window for optimal results is not yet known.

 Although the study tested the effects of exercising after a four-hour delay, it’s possible that waiting two hours or six hours to exercise could have a better (or worse) effect on memory.

Newly learned information creates memory traces in the brain, which can either decay or get consolidated into long-term memory.

Recent studies have shown that physical exercise causes a sharp increase in the release of certain neurotransmitters, like dopamine and noradrenaline, that are likely crucial to the consolidation of memories.