Thursday, May 17, 2018

Sports Diligent Men Produce Smart Descendants

It has been widely known the habit of diligent exercise will bring a positive impact on the health of the body. In addition to healthy body, exercise can also be a means of stress relief. Sports even contribute to improve intelligence.

Physical activity is able to strengthen the connection between neurons in the hippocampus, an important part of the brain that affects the ability to remember and learn something. The stronger the connection of neurons, the sharper the person thinks. Exercise also affects how genes work and change to be inherited to their offspring. This process is called epigenetics.

A group of scientists from the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases at Gottingen studied whether men's intelligence influenced exercise habits could be passed on to their children. They conducted experiments using white rats placed in a cage with a wheel rim.

In the cage, the rats fill their time with the physical activity of playing the wheel. As a control, a group of male rats was placed in another cage without a wheel-drive wheel. After living in each cage for 10 weeks, male rats were mated to female rats to produce a new generation.

Male rats who are diligent in playing the wheel turn out to have better neuron connections than mice that lack physical activity. The result is that they have better cognitive abilities than control mice. Interestingly again, children born from marriage with active male rats active activity inherited inherit intelligence.

Rat-born children of smarter studs exhibit strong connections between neurons and hippocampus. In contrast, children of control mice are not as smart as they are because neuron connections are weaker. Children from active mice learn faster, although they have not moved much like their parents.

From these results, researchers concluded sperm stud also contribute in shaping the child's intelligence. "Our findings prove that physical activity in one generation can affect intelligence in the next generation," said Andr Fischer, professor at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases and senior researcher in the study.

The results of this study have been published in the journal Cell Reports. Then, does the same effect also occur in humans? Until now unknown because of new research conducted on white mice. However, in the next project Fischer and his colleagues plan to make further studies involving humans.

"In my opinion, exercise may be more important than mental stimulation to stimulate the brain and gene expression in determining hereditary intelligence," Fischer said as quoted by the New York Times.

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