The major implication is that exercise not only keeps the brain from rotting, but it also reverses the cell deterioration associated with aging. More than likely, what Kramer’s scans show is how exercise improves the brain’s ability to compensate. “Let’s say the prefrontal cortex isn’t functioning quite up to par,” he explains. “You might be able to recruit other areas of the cortex to do the task in a different way. One way to think about the increased volume is that it might turn back the clock in terms of how well the circuits function to do different things.” There’s an awful lot our
...more
