Exercise added to cognitive training results in 3x greater gains in measures of cognition

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TL:DR: adding ~150 minutes workouts per week (at 60-80% max heart rate, in 4 sessions of about 40 minutes a week over 6 months) to Brain HQ and SocialVille online cognitive training improved results significantly.

In a randomized controlled trial with 47 first-episode patients with schizophrenia, we contrasted six months of Cognitive Training & Exercise (CT&E) with Cognitive Training (CT) alone. The computerized cognitive training using PositScience BrainHQ and SocialVille programs was provided to all participants, four hours/week at the UCLA clinic for six months. The CT&E group also participated in total body circuit training exercises, with a goal of completing 150 minutes/week.

Both groups showed cognitive and work/school functioning gains, but the improvements were three times as large when aerobic exercise was added to cognitive training.

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When I was at college I was going to AA, getting about the right amount of exercise, drinking very little coffee, and doing transcendal meditation, and math came much easier to me than it did in high school. Sometimes I wish I had stuck with the math, and the rest of my routine, to see how far I could go with it, kind of like a professional boxer coming into the game older than usual. But then I fell off the wagon and I didn’t attend math classes regularly, and all my grades plummetted. Before that my grades were good, but I was still in anguish.

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