Doesn't sport make you smarter?
Exercise is healthy - of course! But it is often said that physical activity not only has positive effects on the body, but also on the mind.
There is a scientific consensus that moderate activity is healthy and improves general physical health, and this is largely undisputed. However, it is often said that sport also improves cognitive functions such as memory, attention and information processing. Even the World Health Organisation (WHO) officially included this in its guidelines and recommendations a few years ago. A research group led by Luis Ciria from the Universidad de Granada in Spain has now looked at the study situation and found that There is currently no solid evidence that this claim is true. The results have been published in the scientific journal "Nature Human Behaviour".
Together with six colleagues, Ciria looked at 24 meta-analyses that included 271 primary studies before focusing on 109 studies with a total of 11,266 healthy participants. The researchers restricted themselves to studies with randomised control trials, which are commonly used to investigate causal relationships. The team found that the initial small, statistically significant positive effects of physical activity on cognition disappeared after accounting for possible confounding factors (such as differences between the control groups and the baseline conditions of the studies) and after correcting for publication bias.
In their re-analysis of the studies, the authors used various statistical methods to find out whether the evidence was merely missing ("absence of evidence") or whether it could be proven that the effect did not exist ("evidence of absence"). "Our results suggest that the effects of physical activity on cognition reported in previous meta-analytical reviews have probably been overestimated," says the current article. A causal effect of regular physical activity on cognition cannot be proven, but it cannot be definitively ruled out either. There are certainly differences between the types of sport studied, the intensity of the training and the requirements. For example, yoga could have different effects on cognition than football or aerobics.
"We believe that the accumulation of low-quality evidence has led to stagnation rather than progress in determining the actual effect," the authors write in their conclusion. The number of published experiments and reviews on this topic is "in stark contrast to the lack of a solid theoretical model explaining exercise-induced cognitive improvements in humans".
The team therefore concludes that the benefits of physical activity for human well-being are sufficient in themselves to justify evidence-based health policy measures. No additional cognitive effects are needed. "Sport also brings not only physical, but also social benefits, as participation in collective activities conveys a sense of belonging." And finally, it should not be forgotten that the value of sporting activity can simply lie in the fact that it is fun.
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Cover photo:Shutterstock / Sport probably doesn't make you smarter, but it does bring social benefits as well as physical benefits, as participating in collective activities gives you a sense of belonging)
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