Editor's Choice Academic Journal Main Category: Sports Medicine / Fitness Also Included In: Complementary Medicine / Alternative Medicine;Psychology / Psychiatry;Alzheimer's / Dementia Article Date: 08 Jun 2013 - 0:00 PDT

Current ratings for: Yoga Improves Brain Function More Than Aerobic Exercises

The authors, as background information, explained that yoga has become more popular over the last decade. However, there is not much research that focuses on the relationship between yoga exercise and cognition.

Study leader, Professor Neha Gothe and team set out to determine what the effects of an acute yoga exercise session, compared to aerobic exercise, might be on cognitive performance.

Cognitive performance refers to a person's mental processes, including memory, attention, producing and understanding language, learning, problem solving, reasoning, and decision making.

The team recruited 30 volunteers, all of them college-aged females from the University of Illinois. Their average age was 20 years. They completed three counterbalanced testing sessions:

The researchers found that after the yoga exercise, the participants' cognitive performance had improved much more compared to after their aerobic sessions or at baseline.

In fact, cognitive performance after aerobic exercise was not statistically different from the readings measured at baseline, contradicting some previous study results.

Prof. Gothe said:

The researchers suggested that perhaps enhanced self-awareness that comes with meditational-type exercises is possibly one of the mechanisms that helps cognition. We know that meditation and breathing exercises reduce anxiety and stress, which in turn may lead to better cognitive performance.

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Yoga Improves Brain Function More Than Aerobic Exercises