What exercise is better for improving my cooking skill? What about the exercise that's best for my alcohol consumption?
If you want to improve your brain, it's important to be healthy, I get that. But come on, the point of exercising is to be healthy. Beyond that no exercise is going to improve your brain directly if it doesn't actually use your brain. This whole movement makes me very skeptical.
This logic isn't quite right though your intuition is easy to understand.
The thought behind these studies is that exercise leads to the release of certain chemicals, in this case BDNF (brain-derived neurotropic factor) that leads to new neuron growth. This mechanism is a physiologically reasonable way for exercise to improve your brain without directly using/engaging the neural circuits in a way that would modify learning and memory.
If you want to improve your brain, it's important to be healthy, I get that. But come on, the point of exercising is to be healthy. Beyond that no exercise is going to improve your brain directly if it doesn't actually use your brain. This whole movement makes me very skeptical.