Moderate levels of exercise improves short-term memory, according to research at Lancashire’s Edge Hill University.

Tests on healthy, active people aged 18-35 by researchers at the university, in Ormskirk, revealed that moderate to intense running or cycling for 30 minutes improved the accuracy of short-term memory.

When asked to remember a list of associated items such as household building terms including roof, door and wall, people who had not exercised before the recall test were more likely to remember ‘false’ associated words in the list, such as saying window when it was not there.

Those who had exercised, however, accurately remembered more words and did not show ‘false memory’ in the test.

Another experiment also showed that exercising before learning the list of words also benefited immediate recall.

David Marchant, reader of sport and exercise psychology, who conducted the research, said: “We wanted to test how physical arousal through an acute bout of aerobic exercise affects memory. Previous published research shows mixed results and we were particularly keen to test the accuracy of short-term memory.

“In certain types of physical arousal such as emotional or stress, short-term memory is affected and mistakes are more common. After exercise (in this case we tested cyclists and runners) we found this wasn’t the case with more correct cognitive recalls.”

The research was presented at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society.