(Press-News.org) HANOVER, N.H. – June 12, 2014 – A new Dartmouth study Dartmouth study shows 12 minutes of exercise can improve attention and reading comprehension in low-income adolescents, suggesting that schools serving low-income populations should work brief bouts of exercise into their daily schedules.
The study, published as part of the June volume of Frontiers in Psychology, compared low-income adolescents with their high-income peers. While both groups saw improvement in selective visual attention up to 45 minutes after exercising, the low-income group experienced a bigger jump. (Selective visual attention is the ability to remain visually focused on something despite distractions.) The low-income students also improved on tests of reading comprehension following the physical activity, but the high-income students did not.
Study author Michele Tine , assistant professor of education and principal investigator in the Poverty and Learning Lab at Dartmouth, suspects the two groups respond to exercise differently because they experience different levels of stress in life.
"Low-income individuals experience more stress than high-income individuals, and stress impacts the same physiological systems that acute aerobic exercise activates," Tine said. "Physiological measures were beyond the scope of this study, but low-income participants did report experiencing more stress. Alternatively, it is possible that low-income individuals improved more simply because they had more room to improve."
This study is a follow-up to one Tine published in 2012. The earlier study found that brief aerobic exercise improved selective visual attention among children, with low-income participants experiencing the biggest improvement. Tine's latest study shows the effect holds true for adolescents (participants this time ranged from 17 to 21). It also explores, for the first time, exercise's effects on reading comprehension, an important research area because the gap between low- and high-income adolescents' reading comprehension is growing steadily.
INFORMATION:
Professor Tine is available to comment at michele.tine@dartmouth.edu or (603) 646-9043.
Broadcast studios: Dartmouth has TV and radio studios available for interviews. For more information, visit http://www.dartmouth.edu/~opa/radio-tv-studios/
12 minutes of exercise improves attention, reading comprehension in low-income adolescents
2014-06-12
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Opioid use prior to spine surgery linked to diminished patient reported outcomes
2014-06-12
ROSEMONT, Ill.─A new study appearing in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS) links the use of opioid pain relievers (prescription medications, such as Percocet) to less improvement and higher levels of dissatisfaction following spine surgery.
Between 1999 and 2010, a greater focus on pain management resulted in a four-fold increase in opioids sold to hospitals, pharmacies and doctors' offices, and a related and ongoing increase in opioid-related complications, including opioid dependence, impaired cognition and poor treatment outcomes. Previous studies have ...
NASA and NOAA satellites analyze Category 4 Hurricane Cristina
2014-06-12
VIDEO:
On June 11, NASA's TRMM satellite found rain falling at a rate of over 74.4 mm/2.9 inches per hour in a strong feeder band east of Hurricane Cristina's eye.Another area...
Click here for more information.
A fleet of satellites from NASA and NOAA are on the job monitoring the first major hurricane of the Eastern Pacific Ocean Season as Hurricane Cristina has reached Category 4 status on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
This morning, June 12, at 1200 UTC (8 a.m. EDT), NOAA's GOES-West ...
Families like practical group wellness program -- and lose weight
2014-06-12
Seattle, WA—Many children are obese these days, but what can be done about it? Research-proven treatments for obesity exist, but they rely on regular one-on-one meetings with a trained health coach. So these "behavioral" treatments are seldom available outside of research studies in specialty medical centers.
It's feasible and acceptable to give this same kind of behavioral treatment to groups of families in primary care, Paula Lozano, MD, MPH, found. She published results of the Family Wellness Program in the Permanente Journal. She is a Group Health pediatrician and ...
Standing up gets groups more fired up for team work
2014-06-12
June 12, 2014 – Chairs provide great support during long meetings, but they may also be holding us back. Standing during meetings boosts the excitement around creative group processes and reduces people's tendency to defend their turf, according to a new study that used wearable sensors.
"Organizations should design office spaces that facilitate non-sedentary work," says Andrew Knight of the Olin Business School at Washington University. Removing chairs could be a low-cost way to redesign an office space while also tackling the health effects of sitting in one place ...
Heart rate variability may predict risk of disease in premature infants
2014-06-12
Measuring variability of heart rate may identify premature infants at risk of developing necrotizing enterocolitis, a serious inflammatory condition that can lead to death, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers.
Necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC, may lead to destruction of the intestinal wall and vital organ failure. It affects 6 to 10 percent of premature infants within the first two weeks of life.
"NEC is currently diagnosed by a combination of laboratory and radiology tests, usually done when the disease is already significant," said Kim Doheny, director ...
Acidification and warming threaten Mediterranean Sea iconic species
2014-06-12
This is of particular importance to the Mediterranean coastal societies with 300 million inhabitants (living and visiting), unique ecosystems, love of seafood and its role as a focus for tourist worldwide.
Research professor Patrizia Ziveri, from Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the UAB and the coordinator of the project says "We knew next to nothing about the combined effects of warming and acidification in the Mediterranean until this study, now we know that they are a serious double threat to our marine ecosystems."
"Iconic Mediterranean ecosystems ...
Fungal protein found to cross blood-brain barrier
2014-06-12
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — In a remarkable series of experiments on a fungus that causes cryptococcal meningitis, a deadly infection of the membranes that cover the spinal cord and brain, investigators at UC Davis have isolated a protein that appears to be responsible for the fungus' ability to cross from the bloodstream into the brain.
The discovery — published online June 3 in mBio, the open-access, peer-reviewed journal of the American Society for Microbiology — has important implications for developing a more effective treatment for Cryptococcus neoformans, the cause ...
Racism in healthcare linked to poor mental health
2014-06-12
The VicHealth-funded survey, published in the latest edition of the Medical Journal of Australia, could go some way to explaining the reduced quality of healthcare often reported by Indigenous communities.
Led by Associate Professor Margaret Kelaher and researcher Angeline Ferdinand in collaboration with Professor Yin Paradies from Deakin University, the survey examined experiences of racism in health settings alongside other areas including workplaces, education and sport and their impact on mental health among Aboriginal Australians.
Of the 755 survey participants, ...
Active particles may enhance phase separation
2014-06-12
Systems containing self-propelling particles, such as bacteria or artificial colloidal particles, are always out of equilibrium but may show interesting transitions between different states, reminiscent of phase transitions in equilibrium. However, application of analytical and computational methodologies from equilibrium statistical mechanics is questionable to study properties of such active systems. An international team of researchers – including Dr. Peter Virnau and Professor Kurt Binder of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), Benjamin Trefz of the JGU Graduate ...
Immune response affects sleep and memory -- new study
2014-06-12
Fighting off illness- rather than the illness itself- causes sleep deprivation and affects memory, a new study has found.
University of Leicester biologist Dr Eamonn Mallon said a common perception is that if you are sick, you sleep more.
But the study, carried out in flies, found that sickness induced insomnia is quite common.
The research has been published in the journal PeerJ at: http://peerj.com/articles/434
Dr Mallon said: "Think about when you are sick. Your sleep is disturbed and you're generally not feeling at your sharpest. Previously work has been ...