MMLM Ep 21: Physical Activity, Brain Health, and Cognition with Dr. Charles Hillman

So Mike, Mike knows this, but I have a kind of frustration with the body of literature, and I wanna ask you about it.

Okay.

So I got my master's degree in sports psychology at the University of Southern California in 1984.

The Olympics was there then.

So I trained eight Olympic athletes, and I've also trained a Cy Young wi- winner, and my scholarship was for aerobics.

Mm-hmm.

So since 1984, I've been writing cognitive motor movement programs.

Yeah.

I'm about to write an article for Frontiers.

Good.

And my frustration, and I would love you to study some of my programs, uh, is that in the literature, the, the thing that moves cognition the best is coordinative rhythmic motor movement, but it's not well known in physical education, it's not well known in kinesiology.

It's very well known in embodied cognition.

And in 2017, uh, Bruce Wexler and Morris Bell at Yale- Came across my content and, and Morris actually studied.

I gave him three activities in his A-tech and he published twice in brain sciences.

So my question is, is there anyone in your field studying coordinative rhythmic movement to move cognition in children?

You know, I, I guess let's sit back and say that, you know, the field is at a sort of a, sort of at a moment where there's a lot of people ar- making arguments about what's best for moving brain, you know.

A- and I kind of have a different view.

There's a lot of people who claim that it's coordinative movement.

There's people who are claiming that it's, uh, it has to involve cognition in the movement, you know, so you have to be trained in executive function per se in order to benefit executive function.

I don't believe any of that.

I really don't.

I believe all of those things may benefit movement, but I don't believe they benefit movement beyond other things, right? And so what, my point is that there's a lot of ways to skin a cat.

Mm-hmm.

And so yes, coordinative movement I, I think absolutely, uh, is a factor that benefits brain and cognition.

And to answer your question, there are people out there like in Finland like, uh, Timo Jaakkola, uh-