Why is walking so good for the brain? Blame on the "spontaneous fluctuations"

Why is walking so good for the brain? Blame on the "spontaneous fluctuations"
Going on a walk makes your mind wander in ways that neuroscience is only just coming to terms with

By THOMAS NAIL
PUBLISHED AUGUST 28, 2021 10:00AM


(Salon) Like most people, I have been walking more than usual during the pandemic and enjoying it. My meetings with students and colleagues have turned into walking meetings around campus for over a year. Now, I have a problem: School is starting soon, and I don't want to go back to the classroom. We all saw this coming. Give employees a taste of the outdoors, and they might not want to go back to their offices and desks. So I am thinking of teaching my fall courses outside.

Yet while I was researching this possibility, I discovered a problem. I had always read that walking increased cognitive functioning and problem solving, but it turns out that it's not that simple. In 2014, a new study showed that walking decreased rational and linear thinking and increased divergent thinking and imaginative mind-wandering. Uh oh. Will my students learn less if I teach them while walking?

....(snip)....

What is the connection between walking and thinking, and is it still good for us if it makes us more irrational? We may have heard by now how walking makes us feel good by releasing endorphins, lowers risk our of depression; increases cognitive functioning; strengthens memory; enhances creativity; and produces a protein essential for neuronal development and survival, synaptic plasticity, and cognitive function. It sounds great, but how are all these related, and why do we have to sacrifice our hard-earned rationality to get them? This is what I wanted to know before sending my students to the realms of unreason.

A lot is happening to our bodies and brains on a walk, but one fascinating thing stands out. They are all related to an increase in what neuroscientists call "spontaneous cognitive fluctuations." Scientists have been telling us that the background noises our brains make are random and unimportant for almost a century; hence, they have filtered and averaged them out of their studies. Yet increasing evidence shows that this "noise" is neither random nor unimportant. ...........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/08/28/walking-and-spontaneous-fluctuations-brain/