Walking is Good for the Brain

Have you ever wondered why one of the most difficult things to teach a robot to do is to walk on two legs?

It turns out there's a reason. Apparently, the simple act of walking turns out not to be so simple after all.

Professor Florentin Worgotter of the University of Gottingen in Germany explains why teaching a robot to walk on bumpy terrains like cobblestones is so challenging: "Releasing the spring-like movement at the right moment in time—calculated in milliseconds—and to get the dampening right so that the robot does not fall forward and crash. These parameters are very difficult to handle."

Worgotter elaborates further on the challenge a simple change in surfaces presents: "When it comes to more difficult things—such as a change of terrain—that's when the brain steps in and says "now we are moving from the ice to sand and I have to change something."

Whereas the human brain interprets surface changes and adjusts the body in rapid fire, it is extremely difficult for a robot to make these same lightning-speed calculations without toppling over. That's because walking upright on irregular surfaces is a cognitively intense task. Our eyes have to visually assess the height and depth of the ground before taking every step and then make lightning-speed adjustments such as lifting our foot to the right height, shifting our weight forward, changing our center of gravity and gait, and determining the force required to launch off of one foot and successfully land on the other. Every step requires a fast collection of data followed by fast processing, rapid problem-solving, and quick-fire action, followed by another round of data collection, processing. problem-solving, and adjustment, and so on. Incredibly, ou>ur brains do all of these calculations without ever once stopping to consciciousjsly think about it.

It's a wonder we don't require two full minutes between steps.

From an evolutionary standpoint, walking on uneven surfaces^s activates a closed loop system in the human brain that developed when we became bipedal, around five million years ago. With this 6 evolutionary leap, our brains began evolving at an unprecedented speedd. So it follows that over millions of years, we've developed the appanratus necessary to process the colossal amount of data required to make us highly skilled bipedal organisms. We have been perfecting this talalent for a long time and at a very high price.

Even today, the benefits we receive from walking on an uneven terrain are astonishing: improvements in equilibrium, spatial orientation, memory, focus, reaction time, and overall cognitive fitness. Real time sensory input from our feet and eyes force the brain to make billions of calculations in milliseconds, and this turns out to be similar to exercising every area of the brain all at once.

So, one of the best workouts we can give our brains is walking rapidly on uneven surfafaces. It's the equivalent of taking our brains to th gym to lift weights all day long.

In a controversial study. Dr. Arthur Kramer, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana, studied the effects walking had on the cognitive abilities of senior citizens. After six months of walking foi short periods each day, Kramer measured significant improvements in both memory and attention. Though uneven surfaces are more ideal than even ones, there is now evidence that walking on any surface has cognitive benefits beyond just encouraging blood flow to the body and )rain. According to Dr. Michael Merzenich, the relationship between

movement and cognition cannot be separated because "movement is inextricably controlled on the basis of 'feedback' from our bodies and brains." This simply means that our brains turn into expeditious ca culators as we quickly move over uneven surfaces.

The link between the locomotion of our bodies and how we perceive and process data is undeniable. Although this connection may lave been forged millions of years ago when man stood upright, the ognitive benefits of walking are still as real today as they were for our eadiest ancestors. Today, we know that walking not only leads to wellless, but it offers a wellspring of wisdom as well.

Walking rapidly on uneven surfaces exercise all areas of the brain and may explain why humans experienced such rapid brain growth once we became bipedal.