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It doesn’t take a neurobiologist to know how muscles in motion—splashing in the water, pumping on a bicycle, shuffling to salsa, stretching before a run (above)—can improve your mind and help in the fight against Alzheimer’s. We now have proof to the molecular level.
Nonetheless, it took hours of weekly dancing for neurobiologist Constanza Cortes Rodriguez to see it for herself. Even though her salsa and bachata classes took her away from mounds of lab work. she became more efficient, “thinking differently and remembering things better,” she tells us.
Emerging research shows the brain reacts to moving muscles instead of simply directing them. “Activity seems to increase the brain’s capacity to regenerate neurons, calm inflammation, and enhance neuron-to-neuron communication,” Connie Chang writes for Nat Geo.
Here’s the full story.
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