We’ve known that sitting for long periods of time every day has countless health consequences, like a higher risk of heart disease. But now a new study has found that sitting is also bad for your brain, which runs counter to received ideas about deep thought, from our teachers, who told us to sit down and focus, to Rodin’s famous “Thinker”, seated with chin on hand.
A study published last week, conducted by Dr. Prabha Siddarth at the University of California, showed that sedentary(久坐的) behaviour is associated with reduced thickness of the medial temporal lobe (中颞叶), a brain area that is critical to learning and memory.
The researchers asked a group of 35 healthy people, aged 45 to 70, about their activity levels and the average number of hours each day spent sitting and then scanned their brains. They found that the subjects who reported sitting for longer periods had the thinnest medial temporal lobes. It means that the more time you spend in a chair the worse it is for your brain health, resulting in possible damage to learning and memory.
What is also interesting is that this study did not find a significant association between the level of physical activity and thickness of this brain area, suggesting that exercise, even severe exercise, may not be enough to protect you from the harmful effects of sitting.
It then surprisingly turned out that you don’t even have to move much to enhance cognition(认知) ;just standing will do the trick. For example, two groups of subjects were asked to complete a test while either sitting or standing. Participants are presented with conflicting stimuli(刺激), like the word “green” in blue ink, and asked to name the colour. Subjects thinking on their feet beat those who sat by a 3-millisecond margin.
The cognitive effects of severe physical exercise are well known. But the possibility that standing more and sitting less improves brain health could lower the bar for everyone.
【小题1】Which of the following can best replace the phrase “runs counter to” in paragraph 1?| A．Goes against. | B．Bears out. | C．Pushes forward. | D．Corresponds with. |
| A．Set a trap. | B．Do a deal. | C．Get to the point. | D．Get the desired result. |
| A．Blank. | B．Edge. | C．Decrease. | D．Difference. |
