Free Running with the Pack by Mark Rowlands Page B

implausible that there is a connection between the rhythm of the body involved in running and the presence of the brain activity involved in higher cognitive functions. However, rhythm cannot be the whole story. Tapping my finger at a frequency of 40 Hz for hours on end would, at most, lead to a sore finger.
    Wolfgang Ketterle, a Nobel-Prize-winning physicist at MIT, also notes the beneficial effect running has on his problem-solving abilities. He describes this effect in terms of the idea of relaxation: ‘Some solutions are obvious, but they are only obvious when you are relaxed enough to find them.’ But I don’t think this is quite right — at least, that is not how it is for me. To begin with, to state the obvious, there are many ways of relaxing — I’m actually extraordinarily good at relaxing, especially if there’s a TV, a comfortable sofa and a bottle of halfway decent wine in the vicinity. Unfortunately, the solutions to difficult conceptual problems do not seem to announce themselves when I am doing this. Since they are far more likely to appear when I am running, I have to conclude that exhaustion rather than relaxation must play at least some role. Up to a certain point — there is a point of exhaustion that is the death of thoughts — the longer the run goes on, the more tired I become, then the more likely it is that a solution will appear. But this will only work if the rhythm has been established first. It’s not as if I can refrain from running for six months, start again, find myself feeling like death after two miles on my return, and expect all these worthy thoughts to appear as if from nowhere and solve allthe problems I’ve been working on for those past months. It would be much easier if things happened like that, but they don’t. On a run like that, I never get beyond thinking — usually badly: thoughts have no wish to be associated with me. The reason, I suppose, is that my mind will not be empty. For that I need the rhythm, and to get that I need to be in shape.
    So it seems that, for me at least, there are two crucial factors: rhythm and exhaustion. Neither will work in isolation. Having less empirical work to fall back on, I have to be more speculative with regard to the effects of exhaustion on higher cognitive functions. First, there are some general principles about how the brain works which might be pertinent. The brain is a creature of habit. It travels down the same streets and avenues, visiting again and again the same old cul-de-sacs, dead ends and no through roads of thought. The reason is that the brain is, in essence, an associative machine. Activity spreads in the brain through associations. If activation in one area of the brain has, in the past, produced activation in another area, then an association between the two is set up, and this means that, in the future, when another instance of the first sort of activity occurs, it is more likely that activity of the second sort will occur too. The tendency of humans to make, both individually and collectively, the same mistakes in thinking over and over again — and even a cursory glance at the history of thought will show that essentially the same, typically unsuccessful, ideas are revisited over and over again, in slightly different forms — is a testament to the associative nature of the brain.
    Sometimes, the brain has to be persuaded to let go, just for a while, and when it is tired it is perhaps more easily persuaded. When I talk to someone who suffers from dementia or Alzheimer’s, I am often struck not so much by theextent of the memories they have lost, but of the power and vivacity of the ones that remain. Memories from a long time ago, from a lifetime ago, are uncovered once again, as if they were new-born moments before. Their brain is letting go, associations are breaking down and in this process we find the uncovering of things that were hidden. That, I suspect,