By Aaron O'Connell
Athletes and spectators of sports have some negative stereotypes surrounding them. Yes, there is psychological research which shows that those involved with sports consume substantially more alcohol than the average person. And yes, there is research that has revealed that while watching television you have less brain function than while sleeping.
But, despite these obstacles, sports lovers are overcoming the odds: According to a University of Chicago study, involving yourself in sports can actually boost brain function, especially improving a sports fan's faculty of language.
Brain function involved in playing a sport actually becomes active when the participant or spectator uses sports language. Associate Professor in Psychology, Sian Beilock, is the lead author of the paper titled, "Sports Experience Enhances the Neural Processing of Action Language."
And although there are a couple black and white sketches and graphs, I highly doubt that the average sports fan would be able to understand the article. Nevertheless, the paper shows a positive relationship between those who are involved in sports and the overall flexibility of the brain as it applied to language.
"We show that non-language related activities, such as playing or watching a sport, enhance one's ability to understand language about their sport precisely because brain areas normally used to act become highly involved in language understanding," Beilock said.
The study was conducted on 12 intercollegiate and professional hockey players, eight fans of hockey, and nine people who had no experience with hockey and had no idea about the terminology used by hockey fans.
They were asked series of questions about everyday activities as well as about hockey terminology. The paper becomes very dry and sciencey around this part and uses a lot of numbers and biological terms.
Basically they used an fMRI scanner and measured brain function during the questionnaire. And the results show that playing or watching sports builds a stronger faculty of language because areas of the brain previously unassociated with language become active in order to understand sports terminology.
In summation (and I'm paraphrasing here): SPORTS MAKE YOU SMARTER.
Now, it may not be a smart idea to abandon all academic pursuits in favor of watching sports all day, nor should a sports fan assume that they are smarter than the average person; but all fans should rest assured knowing that the countless hours of playing or watching sports has actually stimulated their intelligence.
Anyone who has heard Randy Moss speak can tell you that some professional athletes are not overtly intelligent, but somewhere - very deep - there is some extra brain activity.
Aaron O'Connell is the Sports Editor of the Beacon. He can be contacted at ?oconnell11@up.edu
