When I was growing up there used to be a view that it was either brains or brawn.  You were either a jock or a geek.  Now, new scientific evidence suggests what many of us have believed for years: It’s brain AND brawn.  The latest research has demonstrated with children and older adults that some degree of physical activity (e.g., 40 minutes three times a week) increase cognitive performance.  Other studies have gone further and demonstrated that exercise actually increases the neural projections (the number of nerve cell branches) in the memory center of the brain (hippocampus).  However, don’t take this information to extremes.  It turns out that too much of a good thing is a bad thing.  Excessive exercise may reverse the positive effects we see with moderate exercise.  The bottom line is this:  For all those schools who are cutting out PE because it is too expensive, perhaps you should rethink.  If PE is too expensive, consider the cost of ignorance?