Newsletter #92: Why Exercise Makes You Better at League of Legends, and How Incense Might Boost Memory 🧠
Hello Friends!
Welcome to the latest edition of the humanOS newsletter! Below is our work, plus the assorted studies and media that captured our attention this week. 🤓
This Week’s Research Highlights
🎮 A short bout of intense physical activity may improve video game performance.
Twenty young gamers were randomly assigned to either a short bout of high-intensity interval training or a period of rest (control), prior to playing a customized League of Legends task. Both conditions were administered to all participants on two separate days. When the subjects performed HIIT prior to LoL, they were better able to eliminate targets, compared to rest, and they showed enhanced accuracy (were able to eliminate more targets with fewer attacks). Performance benefits were observed regardless of fitness level.
🎶 Choosing the right music can make it easier to exercise hard and build physical fitness.
Nineteen active young women performed endurance (walking for 10 minutes at 4 mph on a treadmill) and high intensity (leg press, based on 80% of 1-RM) exercise under four different randomly assigned conditions: no music, with music at 90–110 bpm (low), with music at 130–150 bpm (medium), and with music at 170–190 bpm (high). During each trial, heart rate and the rating of perceived exertion were assessed. Listening to the high tempo music was shown to result in the lowest rating of perceived exertion, and elicited the highest heart rate, suggesting that subjects were able to work harder with less effort. Greater benefits were observed for the endurance condition than for the high-intensity work.
🌹 Odor cues during sleep may help enhance learning.
Researchers recruited 54 sixth-grade students from a school in Germany, and randomly assigned them into experimental and control groups. During the study, students in the experimental group studied English vocabulary while rose-scented incense sticks were being used in the classroom, and also placed the incense sticks on the table next to their bed while they slept.
In another phase of the experiment, incense sticks were also situated beside them while they were tested on the language material. When the incense was used during the learning and the sleeping phase, the students showed a ~30% improvement in learning success, with additional memory-boosting benefits if the odor cue was employed during the testing phase.
Videos We Loved This Week
- Jari Roomer: How To Protect Your Focus And Reach "Flow State." Via The Art of Improvement.
- Michael Smolensky: The Circadian Clock and Shift Work in the 21st Century. Via The Library of Congress.
- Jacqui Frank and Sara Silverstein: How the Super Bowl Became the Championship of Advertising. Via Business Insider.
Products We Are Enjoying
🍵 Matcha Love Ceremonial Green Tea Powder.
Matcha is a powder made from finely grinding green tea leaves. Because you are ingesting the whole plant, as opposed to an infusion like when you use tea bags, you are getting waaaaaay more of the bioactive catechins like EGCG (be aware that this also means somewhat higher caffeine content, so you probably don’t wanna consume this later in the day). The powder is also super easy to add to smoothies and other stuff, compared to brewing green tea.
I like this particular brand because it has a very clean taste and it’s the brightest green I’ve ever seen (you’ll be blown away when you open it). It’s a little pricey, but a tiny amount should go a long way since there are no fillers, sweeteners, dairy solids, or other additives that you commonly see in matcha products. You can order on Amazon, or you should be able to find it at Kroger too.