Healthy and active lifestyle has long been known to prevent someone from diseases related to obesity and strengthen memory. But it turns out that it benefits not only for healthy people are also more likely to have a longer attention span than those who sedentary or sedentary lifestyle.
Attention span or the attention span of a period in which a person can focus on one thing without being disturbed. In particular, a team of researchers from the University of Granada, Spain found that physical activity such as running and other exercise can improve the function of the central nervous system aka the central nervous system (CNS) and the autonomic nervous system (ANS).
Not only have a longer attention span, people are actively engaged also known to have better cognitive skills than their colleagues who did not so active.
To reach this conclusion, the research team compared the cognitive performance of participants with a sustained attention test (sustained attention), oriented attention (time oriented attention) and the participants' perception of time.
Participants consisted of 28 young men, mostly students of the University of Granada. 14 people aged between 17-23 years of which exhibit low physical ability (physical aptitude) that indicates the portion is much less physical activity. While another 14 people aged 18-29 years is much more active than the other participants.
To prove high levels of physical ability the second group, the researchers revealed that 11 of them belong to the cycling federation, while three others studying physical activity in university.
From there, researchers from the University of Granada found that with cycling, participants in the first group are physically fit able to stay focused on the job longer, including responding to some stimuli more quickly.
Even the researchers were quite surprised to find out the differences influence cognitive tests against the ANS participants. For example, when researchers tested the perception of time, participants' heart rate decreased. But when sustained attention (sustained perception) tested, virtually no change in the heart rate of participants.
In fact, when researchers move from one test to another, the heart rate of participants who actively engaged is the most stable. In contrast, the sedentary group showed that heart rate up and down from one test to another.
"It is important to highlight that the physiological and behavioral findings obtained through this study suggests that the main benefits of physical fitness cyclists who participated in this study seem to have anything to do with the number of processes that are affected by sustained attention (sustained attention)," said research team leader, Antonio Luque Casado of the Department of Experimental Psychology, as reported by redOrbit on Sunday (04/14/2013).