Physical Fitness Makes Kids' Brains Bigger

Whom is going to follow these for the next 70 years to see if they survive stroke better and end up with less disability?
 This is pretty much what John J. Ratey, MD, author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, wrote about neurogenesis in 2008.

http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/news/2014/08/physical-fitness-makes-kids-brains-bigger?
A new study of 9- and 10-year-olds finds that those who are more aerobically fit have more fibrous and compact white-matter tracts in the brain than their peers who are less fit. “White matter” describes the bundles of axons that carry nerve signals from one brain region to another. More compact white matter is associated with faster and more efficient nerve activity. 

 

The team reports its findings in the open-access journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 

 

“Previous studies suggest that children with higher levels of aerobic fitness show greater brain volumes in gray-matter brain regions important for memory and learning,” said University of Illinois postdoctoral researcher Laura Chaddock-Heyman, who conducted the study with kinesiology and community health professor Charles Hillman and psychology professor and Beckman Institute director Arthur Kramer. “Now for the first time we explored how aerobic fitness relates to white matter in children’s brains.”

 

I was quite physically fit as a kid, walking and biking all over the place.

More at link.