Learn to Juggle, Rewire Your Brain

Not everyone who learns how to juggle and do it well will find that it turns into their personal ticket into space, as Guy Laliberte, Cirque de Soleil founder, has now wrapped up his stint as first clown in space.

However, an Oxford University study suggests that everyone who at least tries to learn how to juggle will be able to benefit from some pretty remarkable brain health side effects.

As NewScientist reports, Jan Scholz and his colleagues worked with a study population of 24 men and women, started them off with a baseline brain scan, provided them with juggling starter sets and sent them on their way with instructions to practice for 30 minutes daily for a period of six weeks. For comparison, the researchers also scanned the brains of a second group of 24 men and women who did not juggle.

Learning complex tasks that involve physical and spatial processing has been known to cause a beneficial restructuring of the brain’s grey matter, the structures responsible for information and stimulus processing. Scholz and team discovered that the white matter, the structures that serve to connect regions of the brain, also demonstrates a structural realignment as a result of having practiced the task of juggling.

In addition, the simple matter of having made the effort was, in the end, far more important that the level of skill achieved after the six-week period. The brain restructuring was evident in all 24 student jugglers regardless of how good or lousy their abilities were at the end of a month and a half. Simply trying to learn was enough to produce the effects in the brain.

Photo courtesy of Supafly, via Flickr