Mind Games

Does running help your brain work better? Can it help with comprehension and reading? Can it make one smarter by stimulating different parts of the brain?

I don't have answers, but I do have opinions ...

Before I worked in tech I taught at Lindamood-Bell (LBLP), a learning processes company that works 1:1 with children and adults with learning differences - logical move, right? The job was amazing and I think the research LBLP, as well as other learning organizations such as Scwab, did and does is phenomenal.

Based on my recent activities/learnings I wonder ... Does running help the brain?

At LBLP we helped people learn techniques for reading and comprehension. On the reading side, a lot of it was through activating the frontal and parietal lobes by picturing letters and creating sounds (phonemes). We'd move to putting words together with more techniques (i.e. "Super E makes a vowel say its name") thus activating the occipital lobe. On the comprehension note, we'd help create images. Have you ever noticed when you read you can kind of picture the happenings like a movie? Some people can't so they need help becoming their own "director" of literature and creating imagery.

Most of our students were children but there were a few adult learners in there. I think children were the easier ones to get in the door (they could skip the step of "admitting there was a problem or difficulty" and go straight to that dreaded moment of learning). Adults often were tougher - it's embarrassing admitting you can't do something.

We had one man (Mr. G) come to us who had been working on a factory site. He'd been there for over 20-years and always did a great job. The site manager left and when a new manager came on board he wanted everyone to read and execute. Mr. G couldn't read and execute so he was fired. We had another student (one of my favorites) who came to us in her 60s. She was retired, a grandmother, and a hapily married woman. But she was at a reading and comprehension level of a 2nd grader. We worked on visualizing letters and putting together words. We created pictures with paragraphs and stories. When she left she was reading and comprehending at a highschool level and I gave her a "Shopaholic" book as well as some Mark Twain.

Per Neuroscience For Kids here's how the brain works:

Frontal Lobe:

• Concerned with reasoning, planning, parts of speech and movement (motor cortex), emotions, and problem-solving.
• LBLP days suggested this is the first "touch" in learning - often activated by looking up. This is why (I think) teachers often look at students' eyes when trying to catch a bluff - looking up is trying to activate a memory. Looking down is trying to come up with one (right and left offer different activation points but I don't know what they are).
  

Parietal Lobe:

• Concerned with perception of stimuli related to touch, pressure, temperature and pain.
• LBLP days taught me this was the phoneme part of the day (i.e. /A/ says "ah" or "ae" and sometimes "uh").
  

Temporal Lobe:

• Concerned with perception and recognition of auditory stimuli (hearing) and memory (hippocampus).
• In my LBLP days I learned that the Termporal Lobe managed putting together phonemes to make small words and conjunct sounds (like pst).
  

Occipital Lobe:

• Concerned with many aspects of vision.
• In my LBLP days I also read studies that the Occipital Lobe managed comprehension (that movie part of the brain) and putting together full words and sentences.

So the running connection - do you think people activate all parts of their brain when running?

• Frontal Lobe: looking to the heavens - "why did I sign up for this?!"
• Perietal Lobe: recognizing activity through sound "ow ow ow"
• Termperal Lobe: putting it together - w-a-t-e-r
• Occipital Lobe: the whole story "I see skies of grey ... and I think to myself, what a wonderful run ..."

Jokes aside, I think any kind of activity helps the brain. I'm sad that PE and the arts (another great stimulous) are being slowly taken out of schools.