People can strengthen their muscles by imagining that they are exercising them, according to study findings presented Sunday at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting in San Diego, California.

``Just thinking about exercise can help maintain muscle strength,'' Dr. Vinoth Ranganathan of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio told Reuters Health.

Ranganathan and his colleagues decided to test whether an imaginary workout could build strength. Past studies have shown that exercise training on one side of the body produces results on the other side, suggesting that the brain's signal to the unexercised part of the body is increased even though actual exercise doesn't occur. отели краснодара - отели Краснодара

To investigate, the Ohio researchers divided 30 healthy young adults into three groups. One group imagined using their little finger muscle, one group imagined using their elbow flexor muscle and the third group did no imaginary exercise. The ``exercises'' were performed for 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week for 12 weeks. replacement laptop screens

``We asked the subjects to think as strongly as they could about moving the muscle being tested, to make the imaginary movement as real as they could,'' Ranganathan said in a prepared statement. An instrument was used during the exercise sessions to make sure that the study participants were not actually moving their muscles. Москва, доставка воды на дом Новокосино.

Muscle strength was measured before, during and after the training sessions. Among those who imagined moving their pinky, the finger's muscle strength increased by 35%. Elbow strength in the second group increased 13.4%. Those who did not do any imaginary exercise showed no muscle strength gain.

The researchers also found highly visible brain signals in recordings of the brain's electrical activity-electroencephalograms--performed while the study participants were doing the mental exercises. Post-training brain scans found greater and more focused activity in the brain's prefrontal cortex when compared with scans taken before training.

These findings suggest that the study participants' strength gains were due to improvements in the brain's ability to signal muscle, the investigators explain.

A follow-up study is under way in healthy people aged 65 and older to determine whether the method might help them, Ranganathan told Reuters Health.

Then, the researchers hope to use the mental training in stroke and spinal cord injury patients, he added.

``We believe that anyone who has difficulty doing physical exercises can use our mental training method to improve the muscle strength they have lost or maintain the muscle strength they have,'' Ranganathan added in the statement.