Muscle Increases Brainpower

Listening to music while you exercise increases brainpower, say researchers at Ohio State University. People did twice as well on cognitive tests after exercising with a soundtrack than after sweating in silence. Exercise fights off decay in the area of the brain responsible for “executive function” tasks, such as reasoning and sequencing. Music may “enhance organization of cognitive material, which is also an executive-function task,” says lead author Charles Emery, Ph.D.