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Music PLUS exercise = additional benefits. Archive in exercise.

Thanks, Misty.

Just one more boost to the holistic paradigm and the 3 legged stool!

Walt

Comments?
Misty L. Trepke
http://www.searching-alternatives.com

A Little Music With Exercise Boosts Brain Power, Study Suggests

COLUMBUS, Ohio - It's no secret that exercise improves mood, but new
research suggests that working out to music may give exercisers a
cognitive boost. Listening to music while exercising helped to
increase scores on a verbal fluency test among cardiac
rehabilitation patients.

This is the first study to look at the combined effects of music and
short-term exercise on mental performance," said Charles Emery, the
study's lead author and a professor of psychology at Ohio State
University.

"Evidence suggests that exercise improves the cognitive performance
of people with coronary artery disease," Emery said. "And listening
to music is thought to enhance brain power. We wanted to put the two
results together."

Those results appear in a recent issue of the journal Heart & Lung.

The study included 33 men and women in the final weeks of a cardiac
rehabilitation program. Most participants had undergone bypass
surgery, angioplasty or cardiac catheterization.

Coronary artery disease may compromise cognitive ability, Emery
said; that's why he and his colleagues chose cardiac rehabilitation
patients for this study.

The researchers asked participants to complete a verbal fluency test
before and after two separate sessions of exercising on a treadmill.
The workouts were scheduled a week apart and lasted about 30
minutes. Participants listened to classical music - Vivaldi's "The
Four Seasons" - during one of the sessions.

"We used 'The Four Seasons' because of its moderate tempo and
positive effects on medical patients in previous research," Emery
said. "But given the range of music preferences among patients, it's
especially important to evaluate the influence of other types of
music on cognitive outcomes."

As a way to measure anxiety and depression, participants completed a
30-item checklist before and after exercise. The list included
adjectives to describe the patient's current mood. The researchers
also tested each person's verbal fluency before and after each
exercise session by asking participants to generate lists of words
in specific categories.

"This kind of task challenges the part of the brain that handles
planning and abstract thought as well as a person's capacity for
organized verbal processing," Emery said.

Participants reported feeling better emotionally and mentally after
working out regardless of whether or not they listened to music. But
the improvement in verbal fluency test performance after listening
to music was more than double that of the non-music condition.

"Exercise seems to cause positive changes in the nervous system, and
these changes may have a direct effect on cognitive ability," Emery
said. "Listening to music may influence cognitive function through
different pathways in the brain. The combination of music and
exercise may stimulate and increase cognitive arousal while helping
to organize cognitive output."

Emery conducted the study with Evana Hsiao and Scott Hill, both with
Ohio State, and David Frid of Pfizer, Inc.

A grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute helped
fund this research.

Re: Music PLUS exercise = additional benefits. Archive in exercise.

Re: Music PLUS exercise = additional benefits. Archive in exercise.