The easiest memory trick of them all? Exercise after learning for #braingainz

If you can’t remember where you last left your keys, what your password is for Facebook or even your own middle name (don’t laugh, it’s happened to me), it’s time to hit the gym.

That’s the recommendation from new research out of the Netherlands, which has found that the best way to boost your memory is to engage in high-intensity exercise.

But, like most things, there is a catch: in order for this memory-boosting trick to work you must wait four hours between learning new information and hitting up the gym for a sweat sesh.

(Which means if you want any chance of remembering the names of Game of Thrones characters, you’re best off watching it early in the morning.)

Scientists from the Radboud University Medical Centre wanted to investigate the theory that physical exercise like weight training and cycling (and even barefoot running) improves the working memory of humans.

To test this hypothesis, the researchers invited 72 participants into the lab, and split them into three groups. Each group was given 90 pictures of locations, and their names – which the participants were then asked to commit to memory in the space of 40 minutes.

After the half hour of brain-racking was up, the first group was asked to exercise immediately, performing 35 minutes of interval training on a stationary bike with their heart rates up around the 80 percent mark for the entire workout.

(For those unfamiliar with HIIT-style training, this is pretty much 35 minutes of pure hell that gives you an incredibly numerous benefits).

RELATED: What happens to your body after high-intensity interval training?

Four hours later, the second group of participants were asked to undergo the bike-based torture, while the third group – those lucky ducks – didn’t have to exercise at all.

Two days later, the researchers invited all 72 of the participants back into the lab, and then tested their ability to match up the 90 locations to the corresponding names, all the while hooked up to a magnetic resonance imaging machine, or MRI.

The results showed that the group who had the best memory were those who exercised four hours after learning new information, the next best was the group who exercised immediately after, and lucky last was the group who didn’t exercise at all.

The reason why this occurred, the researchers speculate, is because the part of our brain that deals with memory is the hippocampus, which needs a fair few hours to “process” and “store” information as a longer term memory.

Then, when you perform high-intensity exercise as the hippocampus is starting to wind down, you flood your brain with post-exercise endorphins (sometimes called a “runners high”) which then pops a cap on those memories, preventing them from falling out.

(Of course memories don’t actually “fall out” like Pringles out of a can, but for the sake of simplicity, this is the easiest way to explain the mechanism. We can’t all be rocket surgeons and brain scientists.)

“Our results suggest that appropriately timed physical exercise can improve long-term memory,” says Guillen Fernandez, a researcher who led the study.

“This highlights the potential of exercise as an intervention in educational and clinical settings. We really can improve memory consolidation by doing sports after learning.”

RELATED: Just one minute of intense exercise is as good as 45 minutes of endurance training

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