If getting to the gym seems like a struggle, a University of British
Columbia researcher wants you to know this: the struggle is real, and it’s
happening inside your brain
.
The brain is where Matthieu Boisgontier and his colleagues went looking for
answers to what they call the “exercise paradox”: for decades, society has
encouraged people to be more physically active, yet statistics show that
despite our best intentions, we are actually becoming less active.
The research findings, published in Neuropsychologia, suggest that
our brains may simply be wired to prefer lying on the couch.
“Conserving energy has been essential for humans’ survival, as it allowed
us to be more efficient in searching for food and shelter, competing for sexual
partners, and avoiding predators,” said Boisgontier, a postdoctoral researcher
in UBC’s brain behaviour lab at the department of physical therapy, and senior
author of the study. “The failure of public policies to counteract the pandemic
of physical inactivity may be due to brain processes that have been developed
and reinforced across evolution.”
For the study, the researchers recruited young adults, sat them in front of
a computer, and gave them control of an on-screen avatar. They then flashed
small images, one a time, that depicted either physical activity or physical
inactivity. Subjects had to move the avatar as quickly as possible toward the
pictures of physical activity and away from the pictures of physical
inactivity—and then vice versa.
Meanwhile, electrodes recorded what was happening in their brains.
Participants were generally faster at moving toward active pictures and away
from lazy pictures, but brain-activity readouts called electroencephalograms
showed that doing the latter required their brains to work harder.
“We knew from previous studies that people are faster at avoiding sedentary
behaviours and moving toward active behaviours. The exciting novelty of our
study is that it shows this faster avoidance of physical inactivity comes at a
cost—and that is an increased involvement of brain resources,” Boisgontier
said. “These results suggest that our brain is innately attracted to sedentary
behaviours.”
The question now becomes whether people’s brains can be re-trained.
“Anything that happens automatically is difficult to inhibit, even if you
want to, because you don’t know that it is happening. But knowing that it is
happening is an important first step,” Boisgontier said.
Journal article:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0028393218303981
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0028393218303981
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