Some young and healthy people improve performance on cognitive tasks while walking by changing the use of neural resources, according to a new study. It has long been thought that when walking is combined with a task—both suffer. The new research finds that this is not always the case.
However, the new findings don’t necessarily mean you should work on a big assignment taking a walk.
“There was no predictor of who would fall into which category before we tested them, we initially thought that everyone would respond similarly,” says first author Eleni Patelaki, a biomedical engineering PhD student at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in the Frederick J. and Marion A. Schindler Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory…