Questão 14 - EMESCAM 2023/2

Read the following text to answer question.

 

Studies have shown that even minimal physical activity immediately enhances activity and connectivity in the hippocampus, and connectivity in other cortical areas associated with learning and memory

And these effects are not, as previously thought, a result of the body entering a stress response and releasing cortisol. Keep up the activity and, after 12 weeks, improvements in cerebral blood flow are evident.

And you most definitely don’t need a gym. Simply walking has huge benefits – outdoors, in nature, preferably.

Head out onto that unpaved trail and you’ll encounter uneven ground, a tangle of roots and rocks that demands attention to avoid tripping. You’ll be bombarded by new stimuli and inputs.

Every minute of walking requires hundreds of micro-decisions about where to place your foot, how much pressure to use when setting your foot down and picking it up again, how to balance yourself, how to lift off your foot to move forward to the next step. You have to be attentive to avoid getting whacked in the face by low-hanging branches, to brush away spiders, flies, and midges, or swerve to avoid the occasional runner, dog or child.

The number of variables – things that could happen to you – is infinite. The terrain, the people, the vegetation, even the weather – it’s all changing.

This is the kind of navigation our brains evolved to perform. This is the kind of embodied cognition that strengthens synapses and rejuvenates hippocampal memory systems, motor-action planning systems, and eye-body coordination.

Outdoors, anything can happen. And that’s the most potent way of keeping the brain flexible and active that we have so far discovered.

Available at: https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/ exercise-and-the-brain-why-moving-your-body-matters/. Accessed on: Feb. 16, 2023.

The verb to strengthen in “This is the kind of embodied cognition that strengthens synapses and rejuvenates…” has a similar meaning to