Spark

by John J. Ratey

Exercise seems to be more than just not harmful, though. In one study, Clapp compared thirty-four newborns of exercisers to thirty-one of sedentary mothers five days after birth. There’s only so much you can do to gauge behavior at this early stage, but the babies from the exercise group “performed” better on two of six tests: they were more responsive to stimuli and better able to quiet themselves following a disturbance of sound or light. Clapp sees this as significant because it suggests that infants of exercising mothers are more neurologically developed than their counterparts from sedentary mothers. He theorizes that physical activity jostles the baby in the womb, providing stimulation not unlike the effects of touching and holding newborns, which clearly improves brain development. In another comparison at five years of age, he found no differences in behavior and most cognitive measures, but there were statistically significant differences in IQ and oral language skills. The children of exercisers performed better, and his unpublished observations suggest that years later their academic performance is better than kids whose moms were inactive, which is amazing.