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 Have
you ever watched a circus? I’m sure you have.
Usually, there’s a clown in a circus. He shows
off all kinds of fantastic tricks, including juggling. It’s really fun
to watch his juggling. But you should do more than just watch it.
Instead, you should also
start doing it yourself! Why? Many studies found that juggling can
make you smarter!
People say it is important to learn new things. German scientists proved this is true. They
studied different groups of people for a few months. They found
that learning new tricks such as juggling can improve brain power. Learning how
to juggle even made the people’s brains bigger!
Until recently, doctors and scientists thought the structure of the
brain didn’t change except through aging and disease. But many new studies
showed that learning new things can result in changes in brain
activity. Unexpectedly, German
researchers recently found
in their new study that learning new skills could actually expand the size of the brain.
 The researchers
divided 24 people into two
groups. They asked 12 people to practice juggling for 3 months.
They practiced juggling for 30 minutes a day. The other 12 people
did not practice anything. The researchers performed brain scans on the volunteers before and after
the 3-month period.
The study found that people who did not train to juggle showed no
difference in their brain
scans over the 3 months. However, those who learned the new skill
showed an increase in brain size! Interestingly,
the increase in brain size did not last. After 3 months of stopping
to practice, the group that learned to juggle lost their gained brain power and their
brain sizes decreased.
“The brain is like a muscle. So we need to exercise it,” said Arne May
of the University of Regensburg in Germany. He headed the research team.
“Our study showed that learning new skills can help improve our brain
power.”
Many people believe that the brain remains static once we become adults. But according to
the German researchers, our brains can improve if we learn new skills
such as juggling. So, why don’t you try to learn juggling to improve
your brain? |
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