Health Viewpoints
Nobody would doubt you if you said you got fat and weak by sitting around eating Ding Dongs all day, but they might if you said that your prefrontal cortex had also shrunk.
Your brain really does change in direct response to different activities though, and these changes can affect essential neurological functions, like willpower, memory, and planning.
Here are some findings about our brains.
Obesity and Screen Time
Exercise may help brain function by reducing obesity.“Obese individuals may have reduced gray matter in brain regions such as the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex and other subcortical regions. Atrophy in the hippocampus, in turn, has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease,”
notes Dr. Joseph Mercola.
Screen time is another brain breaker.
Teens who frequently used social media had poorer cortical thickness in the lateral prefrontal cortex and medial prefrontal cortex, reports Epoch Times
contributor Beth Giuffre.
These areas of the brain help with social cognitive control of our behavior. In other words, teens who spend time on screens are losing the brain power to navigate social situations.
Research published in the International Journal of Sociology of the Family in 2021,
linked excessive screen time to “atrophy in the frontal, striatal, and insula cortex regions of the brain.”
This can undermine memory and increase the risk of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Gaming
also erodes the brain’s gray matter in the right posterior cingulate gyrus, reports Epoch Times biomed reporter Marina Zhang. This area is responsible for motivation and “top-down control of visual attention.”
“Gamers also had reduced white matter in the left and right cingulum, a structure that helps regulate emotions and pain that is also involved in predicting and avoiding negative consequences,” she reported.
Gardening and Exercise
In 2019, the Journal of Environmental Horticulture
published a review of several studies that found gardening helped the brain grow,
reported Tatiana Denning.
Participants in horticulture therapy programs showed an increase in regional gray matter volume of the left subgenual anterior cingulate cortex and left superior frontal gyrus, researchers found.
Exercise, meanwhile, increases the size of the hippocampus,
reports Flora Zhao. The hippocampus plays several roles, including consolidating memory.
“Older adults with high aerobic capacity have relatively
large hippocampal volumes,” she noted. This can help compensate for brain age-related shrinkage.
Another study found exercise
counteracted the atrophy of the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex. The prefrontal cortex is involved in your core personality and behaviors, including your ability to plan. The anterior cingulate cortex is where emotions meet cognitive function. It is sometimes considered the biological seat of willpower.
Depressed patients see shrinkage in the hippocampus, anterior cingulate cortex, and prefrontal cortex which exercise can counteract. This may be why exercise is consistently found to alleviate depression.
Meditation
Friederike Fabritius, an internationally renowned neuroscientist,
told The Epoch Times that meditation can have a transformative effect on people.
“With mediation, your prefrontal cortex will thicken and this increased surface area will aid in bolstering your rational thinking and cognition. Your bodily awareness, as well as your intuition, will heighten as you strengthen your insula,” she said in an email interview.
These brain structures are associated with attention, sensory processing, movement, and more.
In other words, meditation supports major swaths of the brain’s core architecture.
