My own observation is that when running a marathon, each mile makes simple arithmetic much harder. While sitting on the couch I can fairly easily calculate in my mind minutes per mile, multiply times miles, subtract from total miles, and come up with a the time it would take me to finish a race. While running a long race, however, this mental process becomes almost painful and seems to slow my speed.
23
From the scientific view, a very limited data collected while way to big conclusion arrived. I believe it is intriguing as a start but there got to be much more data to be gathered, analyzed only then conclusions can be reached.
16
This is an excellent subject, and one I've been following, with an eye to its scientific significance. I can contribute this observation from watching people do things involving strength. Ounce for ounce of muscle mass, females on the average outperform males, or easily hold their own. This puzzled me until I reasoned an answer. And this should be studied in a good, controlled experiment. I conjecture that it is because when females 'do things', they just do them, without a lot of theory. Men tend to think about it, inject some analysis, and perhaps even question it. Females 'just do it'. The resulting difference in strength/oz of muscle isn't due to brains using the energy. It is more likely due to the semi-autonomous brakes that are applied due to the brain action. Or the neural overhead in muscle messaging.
This is similar to what I found as an NCAA wrestler. When I was acquired the ability to perform w/o thinking, I had very clearly superior results. I didn't discover this so much as merely put into action what my coach observed and suggested.
It would be interesting to compare these results to those of the same study, repeated with elite collegiate women rowers.
17
This is just dumb. I paddle marathon distances with a team, and the moment I think of anything, I lose my athletic focus. The upshot is this form of exercise is a great way to turn off a brain that is overactive with thought. You simply can't get any kind of quality analysis out of something this silly. Nor should you. Work out when you work out and think when you are done.
15
"Our supersized cranial contents "probably" provided an advantage during our evolution as a species. Smart creatures "presumably could have" outwitted predators and outmaneuvered prey..." Our large brains certainly did provide a huge advantage over other species, including out-witting prey....just as they do today. Does even the New York Times have to hedge on the most obvious of scientific facts these days?...perhaps so as not to offend the majority of Republicans who polls show don't believe in evolution, or in science in general? Bigly sad.
4
Very interesting study. The major cycling tours allow the riders to wear ear pieces to listen to team instructions. Riders are required to think less about strategy and focus on performance. Someone in the team car does the thinking for them. However, if cycling reverts back to the old days and bans the earpieces, cyclists will have to again strategize while riding. It will be interesting to see what happens to their performances.
3
I rowed in college and still row on the rowing machine almost every day. As I was in the middle of a long set today, I thought about this article and the study mentioned. While I rowed for longer than 3 minutes, I don't think that I could concentrate enough on things being asked of me while rowing all out, especially since I can't even concentrate on a brief conversation with my kids during that time. I don't really understand what the point of putting memorization (brain power) again physical activity (rowing all out) since it seems like rowing all out is a complete extreme of activity. Maybe I am missing something critical though?
1
Could this not be driven by the vain of the subjects? 62 elite college rowers doesn’t sound like an average population sample and these folks probably think very highly of themselves. I can imagine being given a mental task, sort if a little IQ test as they’d perceive it, gets them all fired up and focused so much they forget to row the boat. To deduct from that that aloocation of resources to the brain trumps those to the muscles seems like a lot of speculative conjectures to me... not very scientific.
2
I wouldn't be surprised if it was possible to dramatically improve the rower's combined wattage and recall through repeated practice. The brain adapts incredibly quick, and the lowered performance is more likely due to the brain having to try something it has never done before.
If scientists had their way they would conclude that it would be impossible for humans to learn the piano because we can't move two hands independently from each other.
4
i'm not working out right now, to make sure I'm doing my best thinking. And I would observe that truly working out hard requires concentration...can't be done while thinking about something else. The athletes were merely making different choices about how hard to push themselves, 13% less apparently, in order to let their mind have a chance to do the mental task. This experiment is nonsense. If it is worth pursuing, it should be done with easy work outs, perhaps over longer periods of time. Or find another experiment!
6
Studies like this are the reason I didn't major in psychology in college. I mean, no kidding, concoct an esoteric study to prove the obvious: it's hard to do two ( or many things ) at once. Think about all those poor rats who "taught" us that getting electric shocks isn't fun. Professors of the obvious unite!
6
One of the most common quips in sports is "you're thinking too much".
5
THe fiction of Encephalization Quotient determinant of response capacities to novel or social interactions called "intelligence" is, zombie-like, unable to die in the face of comparative ethological tests: intelligence is specific adaptation tightly correlated to specie ecosystem niche.
Mice have the same EQ, brain to body mass as humans, and some smaller mammals superior. Small birds are considerably higher.
Work relevant to huge brains of ocean mammals who require heavy fat layers, shows fat must be removed from the equation, having no correlation to functional EQ.
This highly socially manipulative primate has cortical areas erroneously associated with IQ which are in fact more adapted for deception, self-deception, and contrafactual thinking (imagining possible scenarios, rather than involved in apt interaction with the environment).
Research described is just such useless distraction that would make any other animal than ourselves clearly, intelligently aware that human verbalization when action is required is totally dysfunctional.
An observer of the more apropos behaviors of other animals, such as wolves, felids, and a few cetaceans (whose brains are far larger than ours), sees that functional behavior and memory is NOT generating reiterative narration, but intelligent sensory association allowing considerably more appropriate initiation and response.
If you say, "oh, humans are the grooviest poets when rowing", you make a proper conclusion. Intelligence? Nyet.
Speaking as a former high-level rower, the researchers here are overlooking one key fact: top athletic performance, especially in a technique-dependent activity like rowing, demands a huge amount of thinking and concentration. The experiment here just shows that people can't do two complex cognitive tasks at once -- not that the body is prioritizing brain activity over physical activity.
18
What I find interesting is that after intense exercise, my brain actually works more efficiently. I am more creative and productive, and my mind wanders less when I return to work after performing a 30-minute bout of intense exercise. I am a translator, so my work requires a lot of mental concentration. I often find myself “stuck,” unable to find the proper words, in the early afternoon after lunch. I then do my exercise, and come back refreshed and able to solve many of the problems that appeared insurmountable before my exercise session.
3
Way too many unsupported inferences. Editors need to be way more strict on these types of articles that take a random study from a little-known journal, to have the staff writer so ridiculously expand the conclusions of the article to the point of pseudoscience. The human body is not as simplistic as the NYT thinks.
7
Seems like pure choice as to which request one wants to pay attention to. After all one could chose to not row at all and get the same number right, or row like crazy and not worry about the other task. Seems like a long bow to draw a meaningful conclusion on evolution from this meager experiment.
1
This is why superheroes dialogue.
1
This study also could extrapolate into other findings:
In general, physically fitter ones, mesomorphs, for instance may be "modestly" handicapped to intellectual pursuits, with plenty of exceptions. For instance, Leonardo Da Vinci was unusually muscular. So was Teddy Roosevelt & Fidel Castro. But generally, people like Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton & Voltaire had been frail.
Yet another fact is that when caloric intake is inadequate, children become stunted but their brains may escape retarded growth unless the nutrition is too limited; they reach their full height, which may be a little less than optimum at a later age.
One other thing is, observed mostly in Africa, that in the presence of adequate calories but with relative protein deficiency Kwashiorkor occurs. This, for some reason, has been far less common in South Asian regions. Perhaps, when nutrition & oxygen supply to tissues are compromised, growth hormone production is significantly reduced as seen in congenital heart conditions & in stunted (South) Asian children. Are African children less sensitive to reduced growth hormone production when nutrition is inadequate? It's worth examining.
1
I use a standing desk to stand all day at work. I don't have a chair. But if I have to read some material that requires intense concentration, I cannot do it while standing. I have to find a chair, lower my desk and sit and read. That is the ONLY way to put my brain in overdrive.
So, from my sample of one, I think muscles win over the brain.
1
In my younger days, when something interesting to think deeply on, I get up and walk at a comfortable speed, not briskly, to enhance my concentration. I think by walking it may improve the general circulation and increase the supply of blood to brain. Whereas, when I ruminate on events I maybe sitting, while I may forget my environment.
In your case, you are sending more blood to the brain by conserving the supply to the leg muscles, meaning the brain winning over muscles?
1
The math, if I understand, sems to suggest a not so dramatic difference between the drops in physical and mental ability:
"The rowers lost almost 13 percent of their power output, a decline that was about 30 percent greater than their loss in word recall after the combined session."
The preceding sentence indicates there was a 10% drop in word recall, versus 13% drop in rowing output. Ten versus thirteen percent isn't a huge difference; did the researchers find that difference to be statistically significant, given the small sample population, and other experimental uncertainties?
4
The stats use delta: 300-294 = 6, so delta is 6, a POSITIVE number; that changes the interpretation of negative correlation: As energy expenditure (EE) increases while rowing, it also increases during the dual task (the weakest remain the weakest). However, those who were weakest while rowing DO NOT get even worse on EE during DT. In contrast, the more people try hard at rowing (EE) during DT, the worse is their EE from when they were rowing: these would be the people who were not the worst when just rowing.
Those with better word recall had better recall while rowing. As EE increased in DT, more words were recalled. (This effect must be generated by people who were not the worst rowers when just rowing.) During DT, those who recalled more words were nevertheless remembering FEWER words than they had when just recalling words. While rowing in DT, as memory for words increased, there was a cost in EE. Those who spent more energy rowing during DT than when just rowing, were also remembering FEWER words in DT than they remembered when just recalling words. Complex! Is there an interaction between Rowing and Memory abilities?
A story that inspires a hypothesis is reasonable, but EXPLAINING results by that story is not. Also, someone musing while dodging a lion will have no offspring. Other studies: a) ecological validity (eliminate confounds): Morley 2012: firefighters in protective gear have cognitive deficits during exertion; b) brain glucose: Alzheimers = Type III diabetes.
4
Another flaw in the study is the use of elite athletes. They are trained to focus on the athletic activity. A general population rather than an elite male population?
3
Rowers are the closest modern humans to cavemen?
7
I'm skeptical. Rowing takes deep concentration on proper form to achieve maximal power output. Rather than showing that the body shunts its resources preferentially to the brain, this study may simply have shown that distracting an oarsman causes his rowing technique to suffer, which in turn results in decreased power output.
26
I find the comments on this science article encouraging. People here for the most part use facts and observation to add to issue. Keep it up. Thousands of science articles need this treatment. They are unlikely to get extensive peer review.
With respect,
Paul Bristol
5
I can't claim to be a researcher or an elite athlete but i do work out (cycling) about 550-600 hrs/year and i'm pretty fit for the 50+ group. I have never been able to combine reading/studying when trying exercise unless it is a z1 easy spin and even then i find it hard (inside on a trainer in case you wondered). Trying to do so at a z3-5 intensity; i cannot imagine as i am fully focused and concentrated on pushing myself to stay in the range and getting the most out of the training. My 2c worth.
1
I hope the researchers didn't get paid for this completely NOT surprising "research". Did they ever hear about being "in the zone"??? Did they perhaps ever go for a nice jog to relieve stress.... Thanks Dr. Obvious!
3
It's funny how easy it is to estimate someone's intelligence based on just one sentence of the appropriate sort.
3
I have been teaching psychology courses for 25 years. In the introductory course we discuss research in the field. One of the points I try to make with students when I have them read articles from different publications like the New York Times, is that research in this area is often flawed. Much of the research is correlational and cannot be interpreted as cause and effect, although it is often reported that way in news reports and stories. Research that is considered scientific must meet certain criteria, random sampling and random assignment, and a control and experimental group. This study does not meet these criteria and so cannot be thought of as a scientific study. The conclusion of the study is flawed. There is an alternate explanation, people cannot multi-task. They cannot row efficiently and perform another task at the same time, much like we cannot text and drive. Our brains cannot efficiently do more than one task efficiently, it is difficult to split our attention and concentration. Rowing for these rowers may be automatic, but still takes focus on the task at hand, much like driving. Our minds cannot be diverted. Point is read these articles with some skepticism, ask yourself questions, do some basic analysis, but do not try cutting a bagel at the same time, you may lose a finger.
17
Thank you! As a sea kayaker I can guarantee that my brain is fully engaged while on open water, not just my muscleing. I pay attention to proper form, read charts, scan constantly for changing weather or ocean patterns; I must stay alert for boat traffic. All of these things are related in that they are skills required to accomplish the task at hand. I am burning calories to feed both my brain and my muscles.
Memorize a list of words while paddling asks that I multitask and of course choices will have to be made, to the detriment of both exercises.
4
No doubt the two activities would degrade each other for any number of reasons, but the relative drop in performance between the two activities is particularly difficult to interpret. For these two particular tasks, there was more to potentially lose on the rowing erg task than on the memory task, which had a finite number of words to learn.
metabolic prioritization doesn't seem the simplest way to explain the performance hit of irrelevant cognitive tasks... what about good old preemptive multitasking, eg the strategy of a cpu that pretends it can do two things at once by making the least important task wait the longest? if an athlete's brain is analogous to the microprocessor in a car engine, eg, managing a stream of real-time data, then of course performance will suffer if bandwidth is directed to other tasks. it's not a question of resource allocation so much as command and control impairment.
and would the results have been different if the study had used a broader range of cognitive tasks than mere rote memorization? many elite athletes occupy their minds with music, mantras, or motivational slogans -- surely the metabolic load must be similar to memorization, yet observed performance effects are positive.
8
I read this on he elliptical trainer and, wait, what? I don't remember.
4
Whether it is true that calories go preferentially to the brain over the muscles in situations where they are competing for the same resources, this study does not come close to demonstrating anything of the kind, because when you are using a rowing machine, you are moving your entire body back and forth and it is very difficult to keep your eyes on a screen. To be able to memorize the words to any degree of accuracy, you'd have to slow down your rowing cadence sufficiently to be able to repeatedly read the words. Yet, you would also be distracted by the rowing. So, you would stand to generate less wattage mentally (memorize fewer words), but a lot less wattage physically. Try again, Cambridge scientists.
9
I remember taking the GRE to get into Graduate School in English Lit. Before the test, I'd had a huge pancake breakfast with bacon, eggs, two plates of pancakes, plus milk, orange juice and two cups of coffee. I took the test. After the test I was ravenous. I felt like I hadn't eaten in weeks. I realized that sitting and doing nothing but thinking had consumed 2,000 or so calories I'd had for breakfast.
1
Kathryn,
THe drive to eat is not directly related to how many calories your body has recently used to do work. That is why so many folks are obese.
1
Experience in war since Valley Forge has proven this to Americans. Napoleon's retreat from Russia did as well.
Wars could not be successful fought if it were not the case.
Waste of money.
WHY are we still conducting and reporting on studies that only use men....and based on this study, probably mostly white men? It’s so frustrating to read these “health” articles to find that they may not even be relevant to more than half the population!
10
Can they draw conclusions for the general population if the testing was done on men only?
9
I would tell my brain to lay out as my body needed to work and do its routine, take a break, do nothing, think nothing, oh oh what lap am I on? Too much thinking, just quiet and relax, let the body lead on this one..........
1
Apples and oranges. You can't compare brain output and muscle output to each other in this way. While watts is an acceptable measure of muscle output, graded in physical units, how is words remembered a comparable measure of brain function? Do we even know whether they both evolve on linear scales? Totally meaningless study, waste of time and money.
5
This explains why the Yale Mens Swimming team, which consistently has the highest GPA among Division 1 sports, has so few great swimmers. They are too intelligent. It also explains why Alabama football wins so many national championships.
A comment lacking at least as much scientific rigor as the original article.
1
62 men only and no women sounds like a big Freudian blind spot. Only elite collegiate rowers sounds like a group imbalanced with one particular quadrant of personality type. And what if the thinking exercises related to understanding the physical areas in movement or health generally?
4
All I know is that when I'm doing push-ups and my cat decides to brush his tail in my face, it cuts my strength in half.
3
I think they may be reading too much into the results. The drop off in physical performance while doing mental exercise may just be a result of distraction.
Like walking and chewing gum.
5
I wracked my brain all night but can't figure out why that sumptuous meal of sweet dessert fails to motivate me to move any muscle in my body, neither cerebral nor physical.
1
I listen to news podcasts every morning while I ride my bike in the Alps. It is my time to think freely and has worked well for me for over 10 years. I guess I should listen to the Beetles instead?
This experiment strikes one as beyond naive, and just plain ignorant of how interrelated and interdependent our bodily functions are.
Centuries of Asian practices of qiqong, martial arts, Chineese medicine have shown that we are an integrated whole with Hara (belly area) being the center of power.
Modern medicine is in its infancy compared to the centuries of eastern medicine and has yet to develop the very common sense understanding that we are not made up of pieces of different organs, muscles, and bones but are an interrelated whole.
The failure of this experiment is failing to realize that It is not a competition between e.g. brain and muscle power and who wins that provides an answer on how our bodies function.
This type of experiment, unfortunately, gives fuel to the Great failure in western medicine which treats the body in a piecemeal rather than holistically manner.
2
It strikes me that cognitive function in the setting of exertion and dominant catecholamine tone is considerably more focused, and from an evolutionary standpoint that's a good thing. Just as blood is shunted away from the gut to the working muscles, so too are extraneous thoughts edited out -- keep your eyes on the prize. This adaptation is more about chasing down a gazelle on some neolithic savanah than besting the Oxonians at Henley.
Though controversial, we administer catecholamine agonist to children who have trouble staying focused with some demonstrable benefit.
2
Occam's razor here calls out for the evolutionary explanation, intense mental effort is not the norm when a person is in 'fight or flight' mode. For the million or so years we have been evolving, the moment when the saber tooth tiger jumps out at you does not require deep and lengthy analysis. Add to this the observation that the system is clearly able to preferentially direct resources, e.g. protecting the brain above all else in terms of blood supply during hypothermia, it is no surprise that during intense running or other physical effort, the favored resource is muscular.
2
For a while its been my belief that unopposed chatacholamime (i.e. adrenalin, norepinephrine, dopamine) is at the root of the chronic, stress-related health problems that bedevil civilized humans. It's only been, what, 10,000 years since the last glaciers retreated and we were running down mastodons. From an evolutionary perspective, that's not a lot of time, and our sympathetic axis really hasn't had time to adjust to the new normal. So when you have a deadline at work or are stuck in traffic all those hormones that were forged by the selective pressures of the Ice Age are still very much in place and surging, causing your heart to rate to rise, you arterial tree clamp down, and blood pressure go up. Only you don't have the appropriate 'fight or flight' physiological release -- hence they're 'unopposed'. Over time, this constant bombardment causes your baseline blood-pressure to rise, and with it all the health problems attendant upon chronic hypertension.
Cortisol, another stress hormone, leads to elevated blood sugar which sitting in your car in traffic (i.e. unopposed) goes unmetabolized. This is one way in which stress is a component in developing insulin resistance and diabetes. Another is that chronic stress also makes you put on weight: your body thinks it's in a catastrophic situation and wants to shore up its fuel supply in the form of fat.
This is why I think that exercise, especially sustained, aerobic activity like jogging or rowing, is so important in taking care of your inner cave-man.
3
the concept of mental and emotional stress seems egregiously absent from the study's model as described by the times. it's commonplace among competitive runners and athletes in general that relaxation is key to performance and that mental stress is the antithesis of this optimal state. forget about blood sugars and all the rest: if a cognitive task is tensing any part of your body, be that your jaw, gut or toes, the mechanics of your stride are quick to suffer.
the next time you watch an elite marathon, check out the faces of the lead runners... they're as calm as cadavers. so too with distance runners on the track; the reason why falls are so common is not that these men and woman are clumsy, it's because they are so thoroughly relaxed that even the muscles which keep them upright are as flaccid as sails on a windless day.
1
This study seems worthy of a high school science project. I would be impressed by it...if a 17-year-old had designed it.
6
I actually have some of my most creative thoughts while I'm cycling intensely. And when I have a creative breakthrough it excites and motivates me, so I peddle harder and faster. I think they feed off each other, so in the end, I have a great workout AND gain great cognitive insights. Based on this research, my plan is to keep peddling and thinking at the same, and then have a cookie or cupcake when I finish.
3
"A remarkable new study"?
The result actually reported in the linked article is a p-value of .043 which is just barely statistically significant. May be worth trying to replicate, but hardly "remarkable". Science reporting in the media is too often exaggerated.
Even if the difference was real, how do we know that "percent change" is an appropriate unit for comparison? Why assume that both cognitive and physical performace follow the same type of scale in their biological importance?
Also striking that there is nothing in the paper about the motivational states of the participants. Under intense double stress it's easy to imagine consciously trying to focus more on one activity or the other. These 62 elite athletes obviously had no need to prove their brawn. What if they found the mental challenge more interesting and selectively focused on that? What if the researchers had instead used 62 renowned Cambridge professors who might have felt more interested/motivated to prove their physical prowess?
This is unconvincing on multiple levels.
3
So? Wasn't it Rene Descartes who told us: "Cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am)? Not I row the fastest, therefore I am.
This trial doesn't seem to have measured cardio-respiratory and musculo-energetic functions. If they did, they probably would've found that the muscle performed at the same level with or without the mental stress as previous studies on mental vs physical fatigue have found.
The allocation happens all in the brain rather than as a result of muscle and brain competing for sugar. The efferent motor command gets attenuated when mind is stressed, and you end up giving up the physical task sooner even though your muscles are still capable. In other words, the physical fatigue in this case is neurological rather than physical. But then, one could argue that *all* fatigue is neurological. It's just that normal physical fatigues have physical conditions acting on the neurology, thus creating the sensation of fatigue.
I believe studies should distinguish between right brain creative meditative brain activity engendered by aerobic exercise like running and spinning--and left brain mission-driven mathematical or memory-test brain activity. Having done both running and spinning, I know the mind-body link that is forged is uniquely productive and satisfying.
Not a surprising finding. Intense exercise requires intense focus and concentration. Elite athletes tell us this all the time. Seems like a viable competing hypothesis. This experiment could easily have been constructed to prove that alternate hypothesis as well
Why is it that most comments with highest "Recommended" have explained the difference in performance of rowing versus memory recall attributing it to either "attention" (or concentration) or an issue of "multtasking." lambasting the article as "silly"?
The study is straightforward and uncomplicated: It shows when BOTH memory recall and rowing is called for, we tend to decline in our performance in each but do so about 30% more in rowing versus in memory recall. To explain it as a consequence of "attention" (or "multasking") helps little because it's not a measurable concept. Or one could say, the measure of attention is through measuring the performance of the two variables under test.
Frankly, there was only one by Anthony Nicholls of the near 100 comments that passed the muster test -- not a good news about our critical evaluation capabilities.
when I was studying intensively for uni I noted that I seemed to eat more/burn more calories than when I was doing more physical exercise - for all-night assignments I would eat sugar by the dessertspoonful
from which I theorised that for intensive use, my brain needed more calories than my muscles - true or not I dunno - but that's my thought.
I row very often, completing approximately 10k meters each workout with high intensity 3-4 times per week.
If I had a tough day at work and my mind is preoccupied, my performance declines around minute 15-20. If I am able to get into the zone, into a state where I can close my eyes and almost feel as if I am falling asleep, my performance peaks and my power will stay high throughout the 35-38 minutes it takes to do 10k.
I agree with the other posters that the type of workout matters, but in high intensity workouts, especially those with long duration, getting into the zone allows the mind to step back a bit while your body works at maximum capacity.
For low or moderate intensity workouts, not much of an issue, but for high intensity, you need to have zen like focus.
1
Is this the least practical exercise physiology study I have ever seen? Yes, I think so. Who on earth trains as maximal intensity while simultaneously attempting a difficult and novel memory challenge? Who would need to? And why this is result even surprising? Of course it would be difficult to train at maximum intensity while attempting the memory challenge.
I find the conclusions surprising. I like to compute things mentally as a brain exercise, and I also like to run. When I do both at the same time, (typically computing at what mile mark I need to turn around, or which turns to take, to complete an integer number of miles in an asymmetric course, or maybe what pace to keep for the current mile so that the cumulative average pace matches my goal), my computing is definitely shaky, and sometimes I have to recalculate several times, and not always get it right in the end; but my running speed doesn't seem to be affected by all this thinking: I just default to a baseline pace that feels natural. Maybe rowing is less of an automatic motion compared to running?
3
They were not casually rowing but with maximum effort for three minutes.
It's no surprise that maximium-effort physical activity suffers when you try to concentrate hard on other stuff at the same time.
There is nothing in this study which would suggest you shouldn't think during physical activities. In fact your mental abilities are probably boosted during light physical exercise like walking (there are studies about that).
It could be that rowing is less distracting that running. The pounding motion and the resulting vibration could be disrupting your concentration. You don't have to scan your environment either when you are rowing.
Hello JB, what I suppose is a key missing here is “Stress”. I’m a triathlete and I have notice that positive thinking comes very well with training. Talking about “uncomfortable” situations with fellow training buddies (your son arrived late for the “N” time yesterday, your unlaws are visiting...) makes time fly. But if you (I mean Me) have the head fill of stressful thoughts, then is much more difficult to keep the pace or complete a long run. Kind Regards.
1
Neolithic hunters rarely stressed their brains and muscles at the same time. They moved very slowly, scanning their environment for sounds, sights, and scents that their brains processed as clues to either danger or prey. A brief period of intense physical activity might occur after their brains made a decision to flee or to strike.
Measuring rowers’ ability to memorize and recall meaningless words while they move at an aerobic pace may be interesting, but it does not have anything to do with Neolithic hunters.
3
I think it's the other way around. Humans are one of the few animals who can sustain the metabolic output required to run a marathon. Like the tortoise and the hare, we could never outpace a gazelle, but we could outlast it and kill it when it was exhausted. Neolithic hunters' focus was on tracks and droppings.
I dont think blood sugar were feeding humans brains 10000 yrs ago compared to today--or even 200 yrs ago
True that prevalence of diabetes has increased, but even bacteria use glucose.
Might want to read up on sugar and mammals.
Like saying two hundred years ago humans did not have aerobic respiration.
The brain runs on a form of sugar. Always has. Always will. And honey, a,ways tasty.
The brain is a priority organ, and I CNS glucose levels have remained pretty constant throughout human history. If we're not getting adequate carbohydrates in our diet, our bodies will catabolize the proteins in muscles and other organs and turn their carbohydrate skeletons into sugar to provide the fuel to keep the brain working.
I don't know much about biology [I'm a physicist] but I do exercise a lot. An alternative explanation of these results is that physical exercise [particularly at the elite level] requires focus. My immediate reaction on reading this is that the athletes weren't able to perform at peak level when give mental tasks is that it prevented them from entering the right mental state. There's experimental support for this. slow (∼25-55 Hz) and fast (∼60-100 Hz) gamma are distinct network states with different functions. Fast gamma frequencies increase with increasing running speed. Problem solving, at least in rats, is associated with theta oscillation. This seems a more likely explanation for degraded performance in both tasks than competition for blood sugar.
19
I have found this to be true. I can't work out at peak intensity and think hard at the same time. When I get too wound up in my thoughts, the power in my workout dissipates and my muscles don't feel as strong. This must be why they talk about focus so much in sports and why there are books on sports psychology.
5
Hello. The same happens to me, if Stress is on the picture. Stressfull thinking takes a toll of a good training day in my case. On the other side, when the head is at ease, training sometimes help to figure things out. Kind Regards.
Another study that only looked at men. This is ridiculous. And it is part of a phenomenon that contributes to a woefully inadequate understanding of women's health.
The NYT (not to mention other, scientific publications) has a moral obligation to develop a principled approach to publishing results from studies that needlessly ignore women. I don't know what that approach is, but it strikes me as inconceivable that this study would be publishable under any reasonable approach.
10
While I don't disagree that women should be studied as well, you should appreciate that in trying to test a hypothesis, you're trying to eliminate as many variables as possible to ensure the variation in the results is limited to what you're trying to test. Adding an additional gender to the study is adding variables. That's not to say the study shouldn't be repeated with women, but I wouldn't add men to the women's study either for the same reason.
Personally I'm not convinced the explanation provided is the reason for the decline in performance. When you're trying to perform at peak levels, you're thinking about form and efficiency with every movement. If you're instead focusing on another task, your form, efficiency, and power will suffer. Your performance is competing for your attention, not the sugars in your body.
Dude there are so many studies which concentrate only on women's health. In fact there might be more which study only women's health than which look only at men.
The question of this study is likely independent from sex so it could have been conducted with men or women only either way.
Do you understand that the New York Times did not commission this study? They are simply reporting on the study, which clearly states a possible shortcoming; that they only studied men. The results are still interesting on their own merits.
This study supports the idea that people who claim to be multitasking are likely fooling themselves -- tha tmultitasking means doing two things simltaneously, but half as well. The losses here of 13% and 30% don't really equate to "half as well" but what those subjects lost was the TOP 13%of mental and the TOP 30% of physical performance, which well may be more than the 50th percentile in each.
1
A thrilling subject followed by clueless nonsense:
"In order to feed and maintain these large brains, early humans’ bodies had to make certain trade-offs, most evolutionary biologists agree. Our digestive systems shrank during evolution, for one thing, since food processing is also metabolically ravenous."
Uh this is clueless cause effect. Our digestive systems shrank because a bigger brain allowed access to superior food sources so a larger digestive system is unnecessary. Calories up, body processing down. See, fire.
I am certain there is a nice paper comparing two types of monkeys on this issue and believe there are also studies of other mammals and of birds.
Further humans are famously gracile, another energy savings that emerges, in the modern homo sapien sapien, presumably all driven by brain growth allowing brawn to be discarded.
And many physical activities, even including dance which has a whole cult devoted to tired training, demand physical exhaustion as the price for the mental concentration training to begin. Special forces are required to go to absurd extremes to keep functioning where reports are clear, the physical limit is nowhere near where people believe it to be if they have the mental resolve to continue, which makes complete evolutionary sense. What animal is served by just laying down and dying when things get harder than normal?
1
So that's why I have such a hard time counting laps while swimming.
3
This happens in kickboxing all the time. We practice a sequence of strikes, keep balance, maintain a guard, watch for changes, and meanwhile try to deliver energetic punches and kicks. It's a challenge.
FWIW, 25% of the body's energy is used up by the brain in the resting state. This is according to Guyton's Textbook of Medical Physiology.
I'd like to know if this increases while, for instance, someone is taking a test in college.
But, as others have commented, this is a media-driven study with a lot of "Gee Whiz!" going for it but tremendous methodological concerns.
2
Of course the relationship is asymmetric.
Brain doesn't need muscle. Muscle needs brain. Hopefully the researchers realize that intense physical activity requires a high level of neuromuscular activation and coordination that occurs at the BRAIN level. In order to perform at peak physical performance, you need to focus 100% on the activity. This study confirms to me, that getting close to 100% of peak physical performance requires a TON of brain power and if you decrease that mental focus even a little bit, performance drops off a cliff. I don't think that the quantitative percentages they give (especially for mental tasks) are worth anything though. Mental processing can be measured along so many axes and to say someone is giving 100% of their mental effort is difficult even in one axis. I think the only thing you can really gather with certainty is that they both dropped...unsurprising for anyone who has ever tried to have a heavy conversation and running/walking at the same time.
10
Serious rowers know that rowing demands intellectual concentration, not just brawn. Reading while rowing would necessarily interrupt that concentration and power output would drop as a result. The study is therefore fundamentally flawed - instead of being a test of brawn vs brain its one of attempting to multitask the brain while performing a physical activity - i.e., like the classic 'walking while chewing gum and rubbing your stomach' challenge.
25
“Our proposed explanation for this finding is that they were both competing for the same resource" - my bet would be that the scarce resource is ATTENTION to the task, not blood sugar.
Cite the research study. Many readers are knowledgeable enough to read and understand it. Otherwise it's just pulling a rabbit out of a magician's hat.
4
seems like a silly study, any athlete who has run short races can tell you that maximizing your effort requires almost total concentration. its a part of running and cycling that i look forward to.
12
So, I took a look at abstract of the study. All male subjects, not a single female subject, students, which basically destroys the validity of the study because this is exactly what you are cautioned against doing as researcher- limiting the subject pool. Results are not widely applicable, they only represent a very small, highly specific group. And your article GENERALIZES it to ALL, meaning: men, women, children of ALL AGES. And using one type of ergometer, not trying other types of exercise- again, validity issues. To me, it looks like you don't understand this study at all.
6
At the gym I go to, the rift between "deep thinking" and "muscle performance" will never be an issue.
4
You never watch Jeopardy! on the TV's? (I like to attribute any difficulty I have with questions to an oxygen-deprived brain).
1
Those are some pretty lofty theories based on 3 episodes of training. For instance, isn't it possible that over time the body shifts resources in the other direction, or muscular usage of glucose becomes more efficient over time.
In fact, my experience with exercise (and other brain free type experiences , ie skiing, walking through nature, meditation, even sexual activity) is that often this disengagement with the conscious mind provides sudden epiphanies that lead to problem solutions or even on occasion rediscovered memories. It is often the disengagement of the brain that allows it to find new paths (or unconscious paths?) that provide solutions.
1
I am disappointed in the NYT for publishing an article that promotes the idea that the discovery of a correlation can or should lead us to imply causation. The author admits that the study produced no direct evidence whatsoever to support the researchers' hypothesis, yet then goes on to conclude that the hypothesis was supported to an extent that would justify a news story in the NYT. As many readers have noted in their comments, there is a very plausible alternate explanation for the drop in the athletes' performances while engaging in the memory task and working out simultaneously: performing on an erg at top intensity takes an incredible amount of concentration. it's a complicated physical activity involving sequencing and timing of most of the muscle groups of the body that must be done perfectly in order to generate maximum power output. Diverting the concentration needed to erg at maximum efficiently by engaging in another mental task will hamper the athletes' performance, whether or not there is a limited supply of glycogen available to the athletes' muscles. Given this readily available alternate explanation for the researchers' results, the correlation that the researchers' are leaning on to imply a causative relationship seems too weak to justify publication of their musings.
6
Many comments mentioned it is expected that mental work affects the concentration needed for this physical task. But another factor may be in play. I believe I heard in a TED talk that physical or other strain can improve people’s attention and recall. If that’s true, the brain performance might have dropped the same as the physical output, were it not for this factor lifting recall, invalidating the conclusion.
Seriously?
How about a study regarding the relative efficiency of patting one's head and rubbing one's tummy, separately, and simultaneously?
Muscles are controlled by brains, which is also where we do the thinking stuff. When you try to do more than one thing at a time, you're going to find it more difficult to do them both as well as you could separately. This is true for everything that isn't an autonomic function like breathing or blinking. Concluding this has something to do with blood sugar, when the "researchers did not track actual changes in blood sugar uptake by any tissues", is not a rational application of the scientific method.
7
I've been a thinker and an exerciser all my life, and have been very aware that I can't solve complex issues while I'm engaged in heavy exercise. I've simply thought to myself, I'll think about this later. It is amazing the clues we have about life that are right before us that we don't understand.
5
I agree. Examining my falls while running, all occurred at the same time I had a weighty mental issue that needed resolution. To make matters worse, I used to think that running could take my attention away from my problems; it has not worked that way!
1
I think this is the wrong interpretation. Anyone who competes in endurance events and pushes it to the extreme edge knows that concentration is key to sustaining effort at the redline. In a 3 minute effort, it's not about a lack of caloric energy that could be partitioned between the physical and mental task. One's mind naturally tends to wander during extreme efforts. The temporary loss of focus on maintaining the red line effort results in temporary decreased physical output until one refocuses. The mental distraction component of this study is similar to this natural mind wandering. The observed performance decline is not surprising and there is no evidence to attribute it to blood sugar diversion to the mental task.
17
As an avid cyclist with heart rate monitoring and lots of data, I know that if I listen to an interesting book I do not push myself as hard. If I ride with others or see a cyclist ahead I can summon additional motivation. Riding on a stationary bike indoors provides a major challenge to power output. It’s all about personal motivation, a mental effort that requires concentration.
This is a good case study of poor science, where the chosen framework bounds the potential to reach meaningful conclusions.
4
There is a difference between concentration and "thinking." Concentration - focusing on a body part, for example, while performing an exercise - is known to increase the effect on the muscle being exercised. Thinking about how annoying it is that your wife nags you all the time or trying to remember if you locked the front door when you left while exercising will do neither your brain nor your muscles any good.
1
This is just a personal observation and I'm not sure if it correlates, but when exercising on an elliptical at a consistent pace and wearing a heart rate monitor, I frequently close my eyes for several minutes and think about projects and problems that I want to explore, and when I open my eyes, interrupting my thoughts, I glance at my heart rate monitor and almost every time my heart rate is several beats faster than what it was before I closed my eyes and began "thinking". This surprised me because I thought that "thinking" would have a sort of meditative effect and cause me to relax and perhaps lower my heart rate.
I know there are several questions, a few being; when eyes are close and I'm thinking, do I unknowingly increase the pace, or does my breathing become shallower? I can only say that I feel that my pace remains consistent and my breathing feels appropriate for my pace. Oh well…the closed eyed thinking helps the time go by quicker.
1
Really interesting piece, Thank You!
Its been 30-plus years since studying human physiology with any seriousness, but another conclusion came to my mind. Muscular function (strength in this case) is also dependent on "neural facilitation". Essential that means that concentrating on any particular function (in this case muscular rowing) increases the action potentials necessary to stimulate muscular contraction in both magnitude and frequency thus increasing power output of the working muscles. If your mind is diverted to other tasks, this facilitation is necessarily dramatically diminished as a matter of course.
This article really interested me as a rower and student of neuro-physiology. Neat.
It so happens that I have taken to memorizing a few poems and reciting them to myself as I am doing my run. On one hand I find it useful to distract me from the effort going into running - it seems to help pass the time faster and helps exercise the brain - but I am also cognizant that it is obviosely using up energy just as your computer's CPU does when you give it more tasks.
On balance I find it a worthwhile endeavor, but on the other hand I am not running for my life to escape a hungery bear. In our modern world it seems to me exercising our brain while we are exercising our body is a healthy activity. The ability to think and move seems to be an essential part of survival when you consider all the people moving about while talking on their phones.
1
Multi-tasking does seem to be the issue here. So, now that that we have seen the male cohort's results, let's see the same research on female athletes, and I'm willing to wager that while their score will also drop during simultaneous activity, it will drop less than for the males.
3
i'll ignore the hint of sexism in that statement and say that research shows that our brains do not really multitask. It is a myth. We just switch back and forth. Even computers don't really multitask...they just switch back and forth so fast that it seems simultaneous.
1
How about the alternative and likely hypothesis that complex muscle activity such as rowing or running requires concentration, or activity in BOTH brain and body? This is obvious to anyone who has performed athletically. And, it really separates the average from the exceptional athlete. The ability to focus ones efforts, to synchronize breathing and activity, and to plan while highly functioning physically.
Back to the drawing board, folks...
4
My brain seems to do its best thinking while I'm taking a warm shower.
That's when I recall that name or thing that my memory struggled and failed with days ago, it's where I can come with new ideas and insights that otherwise remain undiscovered. Problems may be solved, and I sometime experience those "Ah-Ha!" moments.
It's where one's muscles are relaxed and soothed, requiring little energy or attention other than to keep one's balance.
I think the conclusion of this study is wrong. It is not a competition of muscle vs. brain. It is a competition of left side of the brain vs. right side of the brain. Everyone knows that high performance athletes are really smart, creative and that some are called genius. This is basically the high intensive usage and capacity of the right brain.
The brain is the central command of everything and it will decide whether the resources should be applied.
Does more blood rush to your brain when you increase the intensity of your thought, was my first thought. Theirs too, I see - "competing for the same resource."
I have spent years lifting weights and cycling. I have had discussions with other philosophically-minded lifters about various epistemological notions (yes, it goes against the stereotype, I know, but imagine the scene and conversations; it is rather amusing) and untold thousands of conversations and debates in my head concerning various things, from Heidegger to Chuangtzu to David Lewis' "I believe that there *are* possible words other than the one we happen to inhabit" [emph. mine] to rational debate about many world woes.
The result: at 50-plus, my health has never been better (I shun the 'norm' of taking meds) and realization that Heidegger was somewhat prophetic in some of his musings (witness Trump and his god-like desires, actions, and mentality), but fortunately, and I have taken great liking to prancing about naked and smacking my behind, having great hope that indeed, there are other possible worlds, just as real as the actual world, and impossibly, I will be able to jet over to one to escape the onslaught of stupidity that is sure to destroy the good ole USA, presuming we have not travelled too far down the wrong rabbit hole (which presumes there is a right rabbit hole; it only seems sensible that there is).
Conclusion: carb-up before exercise. Also, it is not a case of multi-tasking (or not); it is a case of using one's time in a positive way (thought) verses using it in an idiotic way (checking one's Twit or banal truncated "conversation" with other primates).
1
Our brains are more developed than any other species by far. That's allowing rapid developments in science and technology, neither of which have anything to do with compassion or wisdom. "Smart" as we are, self destruction is well within reach.
9
The issue probably is attention - where that attention is - so it's likely that the brain opts for more attention to brain-related 'stuff' and hence directs more energy in that direction when there's a conflict.
10
People who compete in orienteering meets are familiar with this phenomenon. It's easy to put all your effort into running when you already know where to go or simply have to follow a road or trail. But if you have to utilize orienteering skills at the same time -- keeping track of where you are, looking for key landmarks, reading and understanding what the map is telling you, deciding which route to take -- most people will have to either slow down so they can concentrate better, or keep going fast but with compromised navigational skills. (Expert orienteers might be able to make the navigational decisions without needing much brainpower, just as an adult can calculate 7 times 8 more easily than a third grader who's still learning the multiplication tables can. But I have not reached that level of orienteering skill.)
5
I have to agree with Jaque. When I watch people using treadmills where I work as a personal trainer, which run at whatever speed is set and is powered electrically, runners have no problem running at the required speed when watching the TV screens that in front of them. Most have earbuds in and chuckle or make some sort of facial gesture from time to time so I assume they are engaged with the TV program. When I watch people using self powered machines such as ellipticals while they watch TV their pace is so slow that it seems to me that it's a matter of attempted multitasking with the brain winning out. And there are myriad, well designed studies that show we are poor at multitasking. The brain picks the "fun" TV watching over work every time.
4
Just wish one of your critiques had been that they only looked at men. I imagine it might be different, who knows how, for women athletes.
3
There is certainly now the opportunity to repeat the study using female athletes. This article was a focused first step, just like the study.
ok, my brother after intense prolong thinking was tired. low blood sugar
"probably provide[s] more advantage for us during evolution than brawniness"
Evolution isn't something that happened in the past. It's ongoing.
2
In my working with athletes and Dr. Fred Travis, I have learned that anytime neurons in the pre frontal cortex overshadow neurons in the motor system, there will be greater muscle and cardio fatigue along with reduced motion efficiency. When an athlete is in the "zone" they will describe it as not thinking, time slowing down with fluid effortless motion with perfect timing. It only makes sense for that to be the priority.
12
Perhaps the author missed the best seller - Thinking: Slow & Fast????
I agree with all the rowers who weighed in here, and count myself among them. Even on the erg, rowing is a technical endeavor, and requires concentration and even thought. A better exercise for this research would be time on a stationary bicycle, which can also be used for peak physical exertion but is profoundly boring by itself and would provide a clearer division of energies between brain and body.
3
I tried that in a gym, but there was a young woman in spandex in the stationary bike in front of mine, being distracted i fell off my bike and broke my arm.
13
We didn't need a study to prove that. Anyone who uses an exercise machine of any kind knows that, if you are going to read at the same time, it had better be really lightweight stuff.
1
Sorry, no change. I now realize that I am almost always running numbers in my head. For example, I run on a 1/13th of a mile track and I count the steps per lap and track the time. While running, I calculate the number of feet per step and the mile time. Maybe, if I could quiet my brain, I would run faster; but I am not sure that is possible.
1
I should have thought that the metabolic priority of the brain was already clear. After all, if you don't think your brain doesn't shrink, but if you don't exercise, your muscles do.
Editor’s note: This comment has been anonymized in accordance with applicable law(s).
2
It’s a more likely scenario that the brain was overwhelmed performing hard physical and mental work at the same time. After all rowing requires immense brain power too!
It's far more likely that humans developed a relatively large brain and a relatively small gut, because our hominid ancestors, as early as the homo erectus, used fire to cook their meals. Cooked food has a much higher caloric density than raw food, and not only provides more fuel for a hungry brain but also means much less work for the digestive tract.
3
This is bad research. The issue at hand is MULTITASKING! There has been plenty of research showing that humans are bad at multitasking. What the researchers found in the quoted study is that two mental tasks, 1. Rowing and 2. Mental memorization and recall are performed poorly when done at the same time versus one at a time!
This research has nothing the depletion of the stored glycogen.
41
They didn't have enough energy to continue their study any longer than THREE freeking minutes? What? They burned up all their glycogen writing press releases?
Seriously. Why do you continue to waste our time with these elevator ride studies?
15
A. It's 'freaking' but I do like 'freeking' because it is sillier, which was perhaps your intent.
B. You obviously are not a rower. Next time you're at the gym, hop on a Concept II ergometer, learn how to properly use the machine (80% of the stroke is via legs) then row at the output of an Olympic-level rower for three minutes and try not to vomit afterward, much less figure a word puzzle. I often say that I want the last minutes of my life lived on a rowing ergometer, because on that machine, every minute feels like an eternity.
35
Agreed, but I find that being in the dentist's chair serves the same purpose, only more so.
1
The size of our brain is vastly greater than any need that an ancient people had. It is much bigger than similar animals such as chimps and gorillas. It's big enough to understand General Relativity and write Hamlet.
Go figure. Why did we develop such huge brains? Now we can see the advantage - we developed an advanced culture. But that culture would not come for thousands of years. Meanwhile the huge brain was underused. Its as if early humans anticipated the uses for a huge brain in the far distant future. Like the Apple, with its stash of billions of dollars from iPhone sales, we just kept all those brain cells 50,000 years ago for some undetermined future use.
1
My own experience is consistent with this study. I do a 90 minute rowing workout daily. I used to listen to podcasts when rowing, but found that my rowing performance suffered and my recollection of the podcast content was poor. I now listen to music while rowing and the dogs and I enjoy our podcasts while we're outside walking
1
Exercising and reading this article, hmm?
It is not about sharing blood sugar. It is about the need for serious and complete concentration *on rowing* in order to row with maximum efficiency. Rowing, although repetitive, is a highly complex movement that requires perfect timing at certain transition points. The idea that someone could row well while trying to memorize words is ridiculous to anyone who has been a competitive rower.
17
Maybe the world needs a study about walking and chewing gum at the same time: which loses efficiency more vs when each is done separately?
3
I thought that our brain's metabolic rates are constant regardless of activity, even during sleep.
If this is true, then there is competition of different parts of the brain for the same substrate, glucose.
And don't muscles burn fat, not sugar?
2
Given the article says that they were rowing as vigorously as they could during the 3 minute exercise period, I would expect the fuel being used by the muscles to be mostly carbohydrates (glucose being cleaved from stored glycogen), with a bit of gluconeogenesis going on in the liver to get more glucose circulating throughout the body. Studies indicate that carbs are the main fuel source during short intense exercise versus fat being the main fuel source during longer, lower intensity exercise.
1
It requires concentration to row efficiently at maximum effort. It requires brain power as well as muscle power. I would imagine that the rowers technique suffered when they were concentrating on words. I often listen to the radio while on the rowing machine and I unconsciously slow down when something interesting comes on.
32
All of the participants were engaged in mindless intense exercise. I am not how you would measure things, but it would be interesting to see the results if it was intense exercise under mentally taxing conditions. Say while navigating a Class 5 rapid or a double black ski run. In those instances you not only have to be physically aggressive and precises, but you have to make split second decisions that will determined your successful completion of a task that will preserve your safety, health, and possibly even your life. If some one can come up with a good way of testing glucose uptake of the muscle vs brain in those situations I think it would be a better predictor of the fight or flight situation our ancestors faced.
5
That's why Zen in the Art of Archery is so correct. To shoot an arrow truest, requires deep disconnection from thought. Imagine the whole, then release into nothing. Think, then act, but effortlessly and without any extra effort.
Thank you Eugene.
4
I took up mountain biking at 64, and was amazed by two things: 1.How cerebral the exercise was. 2.How quickly mental fatigue broke down my physical side.
Four years later I am in better physical shape...and better mental condition. I can feel and measure and differentiate each. My rides last an hour or more. Different aspects of a ride require different energies. A simple climb. A steep climb. A technical stretch--which means negotiating rocks. Downhill technical, which is generally cerebral (and scary). Uphill technical, which is cerebral and physically demanding.
The first thing I learned is that when climbing is linked with negotiating rocks both the mind and body fall apart. The only thing I can compare it to is meeting an opponent so much better than you that your legs and mind quickly go rubbery. Think stepping into the ring with a trained boxer, who just keeps hitting you, but you can't even get the words out to give up.
Both my technical riding and conditioning have improved over the last 4 years. Two weeks ago, riding alone, I found myself on an advanced technical run. My concentration peaked and I rode as well as I ever have. (out of necessity, of course) But, that concentration wore out before my physical energies. It was very clear to me.
This is consistent with the rowing experiment. But the rowing experiment was for a very short time period AND (excuse my bias) rowing isn't much of a cerebral exercise. Negotiating rocks at speed requires decision making.
5
Based on my experience as a runner, I think this experiment is mostly about distraction. In any hard workout, concentration is required. To give full effort you must focus on your performance. If you are distracted by mental challenges, your concentration suffers and so does your performance. The point isn't that you are allocating the mental and the physical. The point is that the mental is being diverted from concentration to extraneous tasks.
77
Agree totally - this is a study of distraction - as the article says, they did not track actual changes in blood sugar uptake by any tissues. My experience as a runner tells me that the brain suffers more than the muscles - by about mile 20 of a marathon I can no longer figure out my pace or my expected finish time, and I often forget which mile marker I last passed, even though my legs are still working . . . after my fastest marathon I was visibly unable to figure out how to peel a banana at the finish line (a volunteer had to help me :) ). Thankfully, 10 minutes later things are reversed - my brain is back to normal, and my legs are the ones with the problem!
2
Or, in the immortal words of Mr. Berra, you can't think and hit at the same time.
3
as a country guy ...
We share laughs about 'science' studies about nature sometimes too ...
You would be surprised how many adults think that the deep woods are like a Disney film ...
or animals ...ever read how scientists used to think about dogs ...those of you who had one ...
now ...being skeptic about GW doesn't seem so unreasonable ...
1
This is silly. It's very difficult to read, let alone memorize, anything while going 100 percent on a rowing machine, especially because that involves sliding back and forth every 2 seconds. It sounds like the two tasks were just competing for attention, not sugar, which wouldn't even be used up that much over a 3-minute span.
45
The post doc leading the study may not have much luck in getting a tenured position.
Rowers at elite schools may not be typical.
6
It will be even more interesting to see if this holds true when they get around to testing women, non-athletes, and older subjects.
6
This has to be one of the silliest "science of athleticism" studies the Times has lifted from the literature in a while. While it's difficult to do the statistics without the primary data, it is stated that the 13% drop in 'power output' was 30% greater than the drop in mental performance. So let's assume that means that the drop in mental performance was 10%. We are comparing 87% versus 90% on sample of size of 62 -doesn't seem like much of a difference to me. But, much more importantly, there is no 'ab initio' way to compare 87% of physical effort to 90% of mental effort- perhaps the latter corresponds to a greater effect, e.g. perhaps getting to 90% mental is easy and that last 10% is really hard, whereas perhaps 13% percent of physical effort is really not that much of a drop-off. It is totally apples and oranges unless a conversion standard is applied.
I miss Nate Silver, who at least seemed to make the Times statistically-critical.
55
I'm okay with argument that intense workout conflicts with intense thinking. Not at all convinced that it's due to blood sugar to muscle vs. brain, rather than concentration. Any elite athlete uses mental concentration to optimize technique and muscle motion.
But argument that the 87% vs 90% muscle/brain performance means the brain is prioritized over muscle is completely specious. Subjects can prioritize where they concentrate, and in this case, elite Cambridge students made arbitrary decisions on how to do so. If the instructions had been "you must memorize at least xx words" or "you must maintain at least xx strokes per minute", subjects would adjust their focus. Huge leap to argue there is an a priori allocation of brain vs muscle consumption of resources.
1
3 minute erg test?! I agree with the others who say that the variable here is attention not glucose stores! Pulling hard for max watts demands attention -- legs, body, arms, in a specific (fast) rhythm -- it is hard to think of anything else. Now, have a rower (or runner) do steady state work and memorizing a list of words is easier, maybe even easier than having no physical task to do. Goofy experiment, Cambridge, do better!
20
I saw the take of a movie featuring a railroad hand cart,the push down the handle type,,with a movie star,whose name I don't know immediately,but he was coming on down the track out of a smokey haze.Same can be said for the human in a mental fog,I suppose some where. On down the line,they either coming out or no no.Coming back in.
While studying for an advanced degree in math, I ran for 1 hour a day in the Berkeley Hills above campus. On most runs I was able to complete math proofs that eluded me while sitting and concentrating.
Rowing is a sport that requires more attention than running, and burns more glucose. I don't run at a pace that gives me tunnel vision; which is the indication that there is not enough oxygen and or glucose getting to the brain.
The type of exercise matters, as does the type of mental function being tested.
82
Ageed! I have done some of my best analytic while running or bicycling at a moderate pace.
6
I know some of my best thinking occurs when I am able to relax and disconnect my thinking from the task at hand. When I am walking/running, it is much easier to just let the mind roam freely and make connections that are not there when I am trying to concentrate on a problem.
As you state, rowing (especially efficiently, and then at speed) requires a lot more attention to technique than running, so there would appear to be less chance for free-flowing thinking during the exercise.
2
The Berkeley Hills are so lovely that I would think they would take your out of yourself. Just the smell of the eucalyptus.
You're always thinking, whether or not you're aware of it. So, like Archimedes in the baths, when you're away from a problem it's fairly common for the answer to percolate up.
1
The rowing didn't last long enough to deplete the muscles' stored glycogen; they weren't competing with the brain for anything but "attention." This protocol was useless for addressing the stated hypothesis.
119
The experiment does NOT engage stored glycogen, but that does not invalidate the experiment finding which measure the fuel use that is supplied fresh and how this is snapped unequally by brain and body
1
As perhaps the greatest practitioner of his field of practice, the eminent Willie Howard Mays, Jr., aka "The Say Hey Kid," once postulated:
"They throw the ball, I hit it. They hit the ball, I catch it."
5
I tried to study for the MCAT 8 hours a day while working out 2 hours a day. On top of all of that I decided to try a ketogenic diet. Miraculously I failed at both.
7
a doctor who has time to work out two hours a day? you're planning to be a pediatrician in japan?
At 74, I still row and run and swim and I still engineer and design structures as a PE. I recognize that my ability to perform math while rowing or running or swimming is less than normal. I live with it. But the author of the article seems biased when she compares the loss in power output of 13% versus the 10% decline in word recall by stating that one was 30% higher than the other.
When I run this evening, I will do some math and see if it significantly increases my mile time.
5
This is interesting. I've always felt that my thinking improved when I went out for a run. However, this is not intense exercise, and maybe what it does is prune away various mental distractions rather than improving the performance overall. But it's often seemed like the answer to complex nagging questions I've been wrestling with would come to me during a run.
7
I have seen articles (can't say if they were statistically rigorous) arguing that some of our most productive thinking tends to occur during activities that have the following characteristics:
- a physical action that is somewhat repetitive and is not demanding of attention
- has no real penalties or benefits as to outcome (i.e. stakes are low)
Examples of which were showering, knitting, and doodling. Sounds like your running falls in same vein. For me, I always do my best thinking in the shower, on a walk, and in the kitchen doing food prep (like cutting vegetables, that sort of thing).
1
since so little of the human brain is actually used by homo sapiens, and of that little part that is used so much of it is used poorly, i don't see much point in touting the size of the human brain vs other species. as I ve always said its not the size that matters........
1
It's a myth that we only use a small portion of our brains.
12
true the 10% myth is false, 100% of the brain is "active", but mainly in coordinating motor functions and unconscious processes etc, so I should have been more specific. restated" since so little of the cognitive processing power of the human brain is intentionally and effectively utilized by the somnambulistic masses...." luckily, for most people they don't have to remember to breathe.....
1
This is an old an incorrect statement. We use all of our brains, not some small percentage
2
Assuming the info about this study has been accurately described this is the silliest thing ever concluded. An equally appropriate conclusion as to what might be causing the decrease in "power output" of the muscles is the brain's decrease in "attention output" to muscle task versus mental one!
84
"Attention" is calorie-sensitive -- that people "decided" to uase more calorie for brain than for muscles means your evolutionary system is guiding you be more brain-biased than muscle-biased
1
I like this alternative hypothesis, that the rate of physical exercise is reduced as a consequence of reduced mental focus on the activity. My individual, subjective experience is that, when I run, my mind pays a considerable amount of attention to what my body is doing. I feel as if my ability to run is pretty much automatic, but when I'm trying to sustain a more than minimal pace I naturally pay attention to what I am doing and I don't seem to be able to help that.
Exercise may still benefit cogitation, of course. Healthier bodies promote healthier brains. And much of our "thinking" goes on subconsciously, in any case. That may still occur during exercise. I would like to see the results of an experiment on that.
Anecdotally, when I am running at a tempo pace I find it impossible to concentrate on complex thinking. I draw a blank on anything beyond simple math.
Undoubtably there is a significant mental component to intense physical performance. On a stationary bike, I find my power output drops if I lose focus, just as pace in a foot race suffers if my mind begins to wander off the task at hand.
23
Your experience echos mine. I can listen to podcasts and news briefs on my headphones only up to a certain threshold of physical exertion. But once I really start pushing myself, anything that requires too much mental exertion just becomes impossible to tolerate while I'm training. At this point, I find myself switching to music at high intensity. But at even higher intensities, even music becomes oppressive; I have to pull out my airpods completely and chant some mantra or tune out just to keep up strenuous effort.
3