Playing sports and moving your muscles is good news for your physical and mental health, and it’s best to find something you enjoy and are more likely to stick to. Research shows that being more physically active prompts molecular changes in your blood that benefit your body and brain.
Exercise, in general, is beneficial for your brain. Are some sports or types of exercise superior to others? In a thought-provoking study, researchers wanted to explore whether badminton or basketball is better for brain power. Can exercise help college students learn better?
The study
A study published in the journal PLOS One involved 569 college students with no specific athletic requirements. The researchers placed the students in three different groups of varying exercise intensities:
- Low-intensity aerobic exercise group (badminton).
- Moderate-intensity exercise group (basketball).
- Control group (which didn’t follow a structured exercise program).
The exercise programs lasted eight weeks, with participants performing three 30-minute sessions per week. The low-intensity group did badminton rallies intended to maintain their heart rate at around 57-63% of their VO2 max. The moderate-intensity group completed basketball dribbling drills intended to keep their heart rate at around 64-76% of their VO2 max. Researchers assessed the students’ knowledge acquisition using targeted questionnaires and testing. They evaluated knowledge levels before and after the exercise intervention.
Declarative and procedural knowledge
The focus was on how different intensities and types of exercise enhance declarative and procedural knowledge. The students completed learning tasks that measured both types of knowledge.
Declarative knowledge
Declarative knowledge involves facts, information, vocabulary, and concepts, such as memorizing and understanding material and historical facts.
Procedural knowledge
Procedural knowledge involves skills you learn through doing, such as motor tasks, operations, and performing a sequence of actions.
The results
The results revealed the following:
- Both low- and moderate-intensity physical activity enhance important mental skills, including working memory and long-term memory.
- In general, exercise helped students learn declarative knowledge more so than procedural knowledge, and students were better able to recall and understand facts and concepts.
- Exercise definitely improves brain power for college students.
- While both exercise groups showed improvements in declarative knowledge and memory, the moderate-intensity basketball group showed greater brain benefits than the lower-intensity badminton group.
The takeaway
While both lower-intensity sports like badminton and higher-intensity sports like basketball are beneficial for your brain and boost memory and declarative knowledge, higher-intensity exercise takes the crown and yields the biggest benefits. The researchers point out that aerobic exercise enhances cerebral blood flow, which is the blood that circulates through your brain, bringing nutrients and oxygen.
