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Intuitively I do this all the time. Whenever I have pressing life questions I go on a walk and from time to time think about the options I can take. I find for
by mettamage 11y ago
Intuitively I do this all the time. Whenever I have pressing life questions I go on a walk and from time to time think about the options I can take. I find for myself that it's easier to see the bigger picture than when I'm sitting. Perhaps it's also that the analogy of moving forward in life and moving forward in real-time helps.
In the case of this study, I'd guess that walking excites the supplementary, pre-motor and the motor cortex, as well as some attentional processes devoted to it from the prefrontal cortex (PFC) compared to just sitting. If this is the case, then I have two hypotheses why this works. (1) Because the motor cortices are involved, the PFC are easier excited as well. (2) Since some attentional processes are devoted to walking it's easier to think in a divergent manner, because there's less conscious and sub-conscious room for convergent thinking.
I don't know how to test hypothesis 1, but hypothesis 2 has probably already been tested in cognitive science (I just didn't look it up). Reports where people get distractor tasks in the experimental group and a similar task as the main task in the control group probably exists.
What do you think?