Exercise is well-known to improve motor skills, and now researchers believe they know how. In the study, investigators compared the brains of mice that ran on a treadmill for an hour a day for three weeks and mice that did not exercise. Investigators observed that the mice in the treadmill group exhibited significantly more evidence of spinogenesis (development of dendritic spines in neurons) and stronger neural connections in the motor cortex (area of brain that generate neural impulses that control the execution of movement).

Science Advances, July 2019