Only a mobile creature needs a brain, points out New York University neurophysiologist Rodolfo Llinás in his 2002 book, I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self.

By showing that exercise sparks the master molecule of the learning process, Cotman nailed down a direct biological connection between movement and cognitive function.

To illustrate, he uses the example of a tiny jellyfish-like animal called a sea squirt: Born with a simple spinal cord and a three hundred–neuron “brain,” the larva motors around in the shallows until it finds a nice patch of coral on which to put down its roots. It has about twelve hours to do so, or it will die. Once safely attached, however, the

Living in an environment with more sensory and social stimuli, the lab tests showed, altered the structure and function of the brain. Not only did the rats fare better on learning tasks, but their brains weighed more compared to those housed alone in bare cages.

To take the example of karate, as you perfect certain forms, you can incorporate them into more complicated movements, and before long you have new responses to new situations. The same would hold true for learning tango. The fact that you have to react to another person puts further demands on your attention, judgment, and precision of movement, e

In a seminal study in the early 1970s, he used an electron microscope to show that environmental enrichment made the neurons sprout new dendrites. The branching caused by the environmental stimulation of learning, exercise, and social contact caused the synapses to form more connections, and those connections had thicker myelin sheaths, which allow

Any motor skill more complicated than walking has to be learned, and thus it challenges the brain. At first you’re awkward and flail a little bit, but then as the circuits linking the cerebellum, basal ganglia, and prefrontal cortex get humming, your movements become more precise.

Learning from our mistakes is profoundly important in everyday life, and Hillman’s study shows that exercise—or at least the resulting fitness levels—can have a powerful impact on that fundamental skill.

The ability to stop and consider a response, to use the experience of a wrong choice as a guide in making the next decision, relates to executive function, which is controlled by an area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex.