Thanks Derin for this:
Riding a motorcycle every day might actually keep your brain
functioning at peak condition, or so says a study conducted by the University
of Tokyo. The study demonstrated that riders between the age of 40 and 50 were
shown to improve their levels of cognitive functioning, compared to a control
group, after riding their motorcycles daily to their workplace for a
mere two months.
Scientists believe that the extra concentration needed to
successfully operate a motorcycle can contribute to higher general levels of
brain function, and it’s that increase in activity that’s surely a contributing
factor to the appeal of the motorcycles as transportation. It’s the way a ride
on a bike turns the simplest journey into a challenge to the senses that sets
the motorcyclist apart from the everyday commuter. While the typical car-owning
motorist is just transporting him or her self from point A to point B, the motorcyclist
is actually transported into an entirely different state of consciousness .
Riding a
motorcycle is all about entrance into an exclusive club where the journey
actually is the destination.
Dr Ryuta
Kawashima, author of Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training: How
Old Is Your Brain, reported the outcome of his study of “The
relationship between motorcycle riding and the human mind.”
Kawashima’s
experiments involved current riders who currently rode motorcycles on a regular
basis (the average age of the riders was 45) and ex-riders who once rode
regularly but had not taken a ride for 10 years or more. Kawashima asked the
participants to ride on courses in different conditions while he recorded their
brain activities. The eight courses included a series of curves, poor road
conditions, steep hills, hair-pin turns and a variety of other challenges.
What did he
find? After an analysis of the data, Kawashima found that the current riders
and ex-riders used their brain in radically different ways. When the current
riders rode motorcycles, specific segments of their brains (the right
hemisphere of the prefrontal lobe) was activated and riders demonstrated a higher
level of concentration.
To read more about this go
to http://www.motorcycleinsurance.com/this-is-your-brain-on-a-motorcycle/
