Are you a fan of a treadmill desk? How about taking business phone calls on a headset while you’re out? If you haven’t tuned into the hype about actively engaging your body while trying to work or study, new research may make you a believer.
The University of Rochester designed an experiment to see if there was any validity for those people who swear they get more done while walking while they work. Treadmill desks, under-desk cycles, and the rise of the standing desk have become more popular ever since “sitting is the new smoking” concept became mainstream.
While we know that standing up refreshes focus, and taking walks combined with breaks from a task boost performance when you come back to it, it wasn’t clear if the people obsessed with getting their steps in while at a virtual meeting were really doing themselves any good.
Walk and Think: Brain Performance
Monitoring brain and body activity of healthy young adults aged 18-30, researchers displayed changing images for participants to respond to. They started off the task sitting which was considered a baseline and then took it to walking.
There were some unexpected and expected results. Just like previous studies had found, some people didn’t do as well while they were walking. However, some showed significant performance gains and improved frontal brain function, unlike those whose cognitive performance declined while walking.
Fourteen adults performed better walking; twelve did not. The study involved a limited sample size of twenty-six adults. Researchers believe treadmill’s cognitive impact depends on individuals’ neural signatures, whether it boosts or burdens cognitive performance.
If you haven’t tried it, it may do wonders for you—but it’s not for everyone.
Further Reading
Eleni Patelaki, John J Foxe, Kevin A Mazurek, et al. Young adults who improve performance during dual-task walking show more flexible reallocation of cognitive resources: a mobile brain-body imaging (MoBI) study. Cerebral Cortex, 2022; DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhac227
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