Tricking the brain to make exercise feel easier

-

Hack Your Brain to Make Workouts Feel Effortless: The Tendon Vibration Trick

Dread the burn of a jog or bike ride? New research shows you can "trick" your brain into perceiving exercise as easier—pushing harder without feeling it.

Breath, balance, and sunrise light: where strength feels soft and movement turns into quiet meditation
Photo by kike vega on Unsplash

The Simple Experiment

Université de Montréal's Prof. Benjamin Pageaux strapped vibrating devices to volunteers' Achilles and knee tendons for 10 minutes before a 3-minute cycling test. Result? Same perceived effort, but higher power output and heart rates—muscles worked harder while brains registered "moderate."​

How Vibration Rewires Effort

Vibration tweaks spinal neurons and neuromuscular spindles, scrambling signals to the brain about movement strain. "It alters perception, making tough feel tolerable," Pageaux explains. Published in Journal of Sport and Health Science, this boosts motivation for sedentary folks scared off by "too hard."​

Future Sweat-Free Fitness

Next: EEG and MRI to map brain changes; testing pain/fatigue amplifiers too. Imagine straps turning couch potatoes into consistent movers—effort drops, activity soars, health wins big.​

Comments

Post a Comment

Please comment on this blog-

Popular posts from this blog

What would it be like if your neurons could regenerate?

-
Image
  What If Neurons Could Regenerate? Imagine a world where your brain could heal and renew itself like your skin or liver. How would that change your life? Would you still be the same person, or would you evolve into someone entirely different? Let’s dive into this mind-bending idea together. The top image shows fluorescently labeled cells in the spinal cord of a zebrafish recovering one week after an injury, and the bottom image shows recovery four weeks after an injury. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis describe the dramatic changes within nerve cells that make regeneration possible. Such findings could inspire the development of new therapies for spinal cord injuries in people. (Image: Mokalled lab) A New Era for Memory and Learning Think about the last time you struggled to remember something important. What if your brain had the ability to replace lost or damaged neurons? Learning could become faster and more efficient, making knowledge ret...
Read more

New 'acoustic metamaterial' cancels sound

-
Image
The mathematically designed, 3D-printed acoustic metamaterial is shaped in such a way that it sends incoming sounds back to where they came from, Ghaffarivardavagh and Zhang say. Inside the outer ring, a helical pattern interferes with sounds, blocking them from transmitting through the open center while preserving air's ability to flow through. Boston University researchers, Xin Zhang, a professor at the College of Engineering, and Reza Ghaffarivardavagh, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, released a paper in  Physical Review B  demonstrating it's possible to silence noise using an open, ringlike structure, created to mathematically perfect specifications, for cutting out sounds while maintaining airflow. "Today's sound barriers are literally thick heavy walls," says Ghaffarivardavagh. Although noise-mitigating barricades, called sound baffles, can help drown out the whoosh of rush hour traffic or contain the symphony of music withi...
Read more

Sweetener saccharin shows surprising power against antibiotic resistance

-
Image
Abstract Artificial sweeteners like saccharin, commonly used as sugar substitutes, are revealing surprising capabilities in combating antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Recent research indicates that saccharin and similar compounds, such as acesulfame-K and sucralose, can inhibit the growth of multidrug-resistant pathogens like Acinetobacter baumannii and Pseudomonas aeruginosa . These sweeteners disrupt bacterial biofilm formation and motility, and they can enhance the effectiveness of existing antibiotics by increasing bacterial membrane permeability, leading to cell lysis. Notably, acesulfame-K demonstrated potent antimicrobial activity in ex vivo wound models, suggesting potential therapeutic applications. ​ However, there's a complex side to this narrative. Studies have shown that artificial sweeteners can also promote the spread of antibiotic resistance genes. They do this by increasing bacterial cell membrane permeability and stimulating the expression of genes involved in D...
Read more