In her 1981 hit single "Physical", Olivia Newton John sings about the benefits of exercise, telling us "Let's get physical… Let me hear your body talk". While the song certainly had additional interpretations, it did reveal some scientific truth.
It's an anecdotally accepted idea that physical exercise has a positive impact on your brain. Now two Stanford University researchers have proven it. In their April 2014 Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition article Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking, authors Marily Oppezzo, MS, RD, PhD and Daniel Schwartz, MA, PhD made the following discovery:
"Walking boosts creative ideation in real time and shortly after... Walking opens up the free flow of ideas, and it is a simple and robust solution to the goals of increasing creativity and increasing physical activity".
Their research involved 176 participants completing four experiments designed to gauge...