Movement and brain function are inseparable. Our brains evolved to help us interact with a changing world, and movement remains one of the most powerful ways in which the body influences the brain throughout life.
In The Moving Brain series, we explore this remarkable relationship — from muscle strength and walking to aerobic exercise, complex movement and dance. We’ll look at what happens inside the brain when we move, why different kinds of movement matter, and what this means for maintaining brain health as we grow older.
The message is simple: looking after the way we move is part of looking after the way we think.
Contents: The Moving Brain Series
Part 1: Muscle Health and the Brain
Part 2: Movement that Makes You Think
Part 3: Coming soon
Part 4: Coming soon
Part 1: Muscle Health and the Brain
Muscle and the Brain
This might surprise you: how mentally agile you are is related to how strong your muscles are!
That’s a pretty remarkable fact about the brain. Interestingly, the connection between brain power and muscle strength gets stronger as we age — even as we become physically weaker.
Researchers have investigated this intriguing mind-muscle connection and found that, across studies of older adults, people with greater muscle strength perform better on measures of cognitive functioning. Handgrip strength has been linked with better memory and faster mental processing speed. Leg strength is related to cognitive performance. Even something as apparently simple as how quickly someone walks tells us something about how well their brain is functioning.
At first, that seems rather strange. After all, why should the strength of your muscles have anything to do with your memory, attention or ability to think?
The answer is that the way we have traditionally thought about muscle is too simplistic. Skeletal muscle isn’t merely the machinery that the brain uses to move the body. It is living, metabolically active tissue that communicates with the rest of the body — including the brain.
And when muscles contract, things happen. Muscles release signalling molecules that influence metabolism and inflammation. Exercise triggers chemical signals that help keep the brain healthy and able to adapt. In other words, communication between brain and muscle isn’t simply one-way:
Your brain talks to your muscles. Your muscles talk back.
As we grow older, this mind-muscle relationship becomes increasingly important. Ageing is commonly accompanied by a progressive loss of muscle mass, strength and function. When this becomes sufficiently pronounced, we call it sarcopenia.
And here is the important part: declining muscle health and declining cognitive health frequently occur together. So, looking after our muscles as we age is part of looking after our brains.
What does the Research tell us?
The connection between muscle health and cognition has been demonstrated across many studies.
A major 2021 review brought together research examining skeletal muscle health and cognitive functioning. One of its most interesting findings was that muscle strength and physical performance are more closely related to cognition than muscle size alone.
More recent research has strengthened that picture. A 2026 systematic review brought together 60 longitudinal studies involving more than 380,000 people. People who maintained or increased their handgrip strength had a lower risk of cognitive decline, as did people who were stronger at the beginning of the studies.
Walking matters too. Walking speed is not simply a measure of what your legs can do. It requires the coordinated functioning of the brain, nervous system, muscles, balance and cardiovascular system. Slower walking speed is associated with poorer cognitive functioning, and changes in walking can occur years before cognitive difficulties become obvious.
The message is impossible to ignore:
Strong, functional muscles and a healthy, active brain belong together.
How do Muscles Influence the Brain?
There isn’t just one pathway connecting movement with brain health. There are many.
When skeletal muscles contract, they do much more than generate movement. They release signalling molecules, including substances known as myokines, which communicate with other organs and influence processes such as metabolism and inflammation.
Exercise also boosts brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF helps the brain maintain and modify connections between nerve cells (neuroplasticity) — one of the fundamental processes that allows the brain to learn, remember and adapt.
Movement also affects circulation, metabolism, insulin sensitivity, inflammation and oxidative stress. These aren’t separate “body” issues. They help determine the biological environment in which the brain functions and ages.
This is why it makes little sense to think of brain health and physical health as two separate things.
Movement changes the physiological environment in which your brain operates.
Strength Matters more than Size
There is another important lesson in this research.
You don’t need big muscles. You need muscles that work.
Muscle mass by itself has a much less consistent relationship with cognitive functioning than measures such as strength and walking speed.
That changes the goal completely. This isn’t about bodybuilding or trying to look younger. It’s about maintaining your ability to generate force, balance, walk confidently, climb stairs, carry things, get out of a chair and remain physically engaged with the world. And unlike many of the changes associated with ageing, this gives us something very practical to work with.
We can train strength. We can practise balance. We can walk. We can move.
Movement is part of Brain Health
We often talk about brain health as though the brain exists by itself inside the skull. It doesn’t. Your brain is part of a living body. It is continuously influenced by what happens in your body — by circulation, metabolism, inflammation, sleep, nutrition and physical activity.
Exercise research provides another important piece of the puzzle. Resistance training doesn’t simply make older people stronger. Clinical trials show that it improves aspects of cognitive functioning.
None of this means that lifting weights will prevent Alzheimer’s disease. No-one is claiming that. But Ormond Neuroscience is sending you a powerful message:
Physical activity is good for your brain. Maintaining strength is good for your brain. Staying mobile is good for your brain.
And those are things we can actually do something about.
What does this mean for you?
The practical message is wonderfully simple:
Use your muscles.
Walk. And when you can, walk briskly.
Take the stairs. Get out of your chair. Carry the shopping. Work in the garden. Dance. Cycle. Swim. Do some resistance exercise. Lift something. Push something. Pull something. Find activities you enjoy enough to keep doing them.
You don’t need to become an athlete. You don’t necessarily need a gym. And this isn’t about developing impressive-looking muscles. Rather, it is about maintaining strength, mobility and physical capability as you grow older.
If you have become sedentary, start moving again. If you already walk, keep walking. If you don’t do anything that challenges your muscles, think about adding some form of resistance exercise. If illness, frailty or disability limits what you can do, work within those limitations and seek appropriate professional guidance where necessary. The important thing is not to stop using your body.
Move your body. Use your muscles. Keep them strong.
Every time you exercise, you aren’t simply doing something for your heart, your weight or your muscles. You are also doing something for your brain.
Looking after your muscles is part of looking after your brain.
Part 2: Movement that Makes You Think
You already know that walking is good for your brain. Walking makes you healthier, after all. And you can figure out that swimming, cycling or working in the garden are also good for your brain for the same reason.
But some forms of movement ask much more of the brain than simply repeating the same physical action.
Think about dancing.
To dance, you have to listen to music, find the rhythm, remember what comes next, coordinate different parts of your body, maintain your balance, judge where you are in space and continually adjust your movements. If you are dancing with somebody else, you also have to respond to another person.
Your muscles are moving — but your brain is working extraordinarily hard.
And that may be important for brain health.
Movement is a Cognitive Activity
We tend to separate physical exercise from mental exercise. We imagine that walking or lifting something exercises the body, while doing a crossword or solving a puzzle exercises the brain. However, the nervous system doesn’t really work that way.
Every purposeful movement requires the brain to bring together information from multiple systems. Vision tells us where we are. The vestibular system helps us maintain balance. Sensory information tells us where our limbs are positioned. Memory and attention help us remember what we are trying to do. The brain predicts what should happen next, sends instructions to the muscles and then uses incoming sensory information to correct the movement as it unfolds.
Even something as ordinary as stepping off a pavement is a remarkable piece of neural computation. Make the movement unfamiliar, complex or unpredictable and the demands become greater.
Learning a new dance step is very different from performing a movement you have repeated ten thousand times. At first, it requires concentration. You make mistakes. You correct them. Gradually the movement becomes smoother and more automatic.
That process of learning is the brain changing. It is neuroplasticity in action.
Why Dance is Particularly Interesting
Dance brings together several things that are individually good for the ageing brain:
movement, balance, coordination, learning, memory, rhythm, attention, sensory stimulation, emotion and social connection.
Few activities combine all of these at once.
That is why dance has attracted the attention of researchers studying cognitive ageing. Studies involving older adults have found improvements in aspects of cognition following dance programmes, including global cognitive functioning and memory. Research involving people with mild cognitive impairment has also reported benefits across several cognitive domains.
A 2023 review examined 29 dance-intervention studies involving more than 1,700 older adults with mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. The randomised trials included in the meta-analysis found significant benefits for global cognition, memory and balance, as well as reduced depression.
More recent research continues to support dance as a promising activity for improving cognition in older adults, although we cannot yet say that dance is uniquely superior to other forms of exercise.
That distinction matters. The message isn’t that everyone needs to take dancing lessons. The message is that movement can challenge the brain as well as the body.
Don’t just Move. Learn to Move.
There is another important idea here.
As we get older, it is easy for our physical world to become smaller and more predictable. We walk the same routes. Sit in the same chairs. Perform the same familiar movements. Activities that once demanded concentration become automatic.
There is nothing wrong with familiar movement. But the brain also benefits from challenge. Try something that requires you to learn.
Dance. Learn tai chi. Practise a new sequence of movements. Play a physical game. Throw and catch a ball. Learn a new swimming stroke. Take up an activity that requires coordination, timing and balance.
It doesn’t have to be strenuous. It doesn’t have to look impressive. And you don’t have to be particularly good at it. In fact, not being very good at it may be part of the point.
When you are learning, concentrating, making mistakes and adjusting what you do, the movement is demanding something from your nervous system.
Movement can also Connect Us
Dance illustrates something else that is easily overlooked when we talk about exercise. Human movement is often social. We dance together. Walk together. Play games together. Garden together. We copy one another’s movements, respond to facial expressions and gestures, coordinate our actions and share experiences.
That means an activity such as dancing isn’t merely physical and cognitive. It also involves pleasure, music, emotion and human connection. Those things matter enormously.
Brain health is not produced by one molecule, one exercise programme or one clever mental task. It emerges from the way the brain interacts with the body and with the world around us. Movement is one of the most important parts of that interaction.
Give your Brain something New to do
You don’t need to become a ballroom dancer. But don’t allow movement to disappear from your life — and don’t be afraid to make some of it challenging. Learn a complex movement. Practise it. Get it wrong. Try again. Move in ways that require balance, coordination, timing and attention. And if you enjoy dancing, then dance. Your body will be moving and so will your brain.
The Bigger Story: Why Movement Matters to the Brain
In The Moving Brain series, we are exploring some remarkable connections between movement and brain health. This page will contine to grow as we add further ideas.
Coming next, We’ll look inside the brain itself and examine what aerobic exercise does to the hippocampus, a structure critically involved in learning and memory.
And then, in the following update, we’ll go much further back and ask an extraordinary question:
Why did brains evolve in the first place?
The answer has a great deal to do with movement.
Movement and brain function have been intimately connected throughout evolutionary history. Once we understand that relationship, perhaps it isn’t so surprising that continuing to move is so important for the health of the ageing brain.
Selected References & Further Reading
The following peer-reviewed publications provide additional scientific background for readers wishing to explore the relationship between skeletal muscle health, physical function and cognitive ageing in greater depth.
Muscle Health and Cognitive Function
Sui, S. X., Williams, L. J., Holloway-Kew, K. L., Hyde, N. K., & Pasco, J. A. (2021). Skeletal muscle health and cognitive function: A narrative review. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 22(1), 255.
International Journal of Molecular Sciences
Muscle Strength and Cognitive Decline
Younis, M., Vints, W. A. J., & Bautmans, I. (2026). Handgrip performance as a predictor of incident cognitive decline in older adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 188, 106815.
Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews
Dance in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Dementia
Tao, D., Awan-Scully, R., Ash, G. I., Pei, Z., Gu, Y., Gao, Y., Cole, A., & Baker, J. S. (2023). The effectiveness of dance movement interventions for older adults with mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, and dementia: A systematic scoping review and meta-analysis. Ageing Research Reviews, 92, 102120.
Wu, V. X., Chi, Y., Lee, J. K., Goh, H. S., Chen, D. Y. M., Haugan, G., Chao, F. F. T., & Klainin-Yobas, P. (2021). The effect of dance interventions on cognition, neuroplasticity, physical function, depression, and quality of life for older adults with mild cognitive impairment: A systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 122, 104025.
International Journal of Nursing Studies
