A new study has shown that children between the ages of seven to nine years who participated in physical activity for at least 60 minutes after school showed improvements in cognition, including avoiding distraction, paying attention and switching from one cognitive task to another.

Half of the participants in the randomized controlled study involving 221 children were assigned to an after school program, while the other half were on a waiting list. Cognitive testing and brain imaging were performed on each child prior to and following the intervention.

The intervention, named FITKids, was based on a health promotion initiative that is now being used in schools and health departments all over the United States.

During the intervention, those involved in FITKids were active for an average of 70 minutes per day.

The children in the intervention group experienced a six percent improvement in fitness levels over the course of the nine-month-long study. Those on the waiting list only experienced less than one percent improvement. The researchers also discovered a cognitive improvement in the children who were part of the intervention.

Regular physical activity encourages the brain to work at optimal capacity by prompting nerve cells to multiply, protecting them from damage, and strengthening their inter-connections.

“Kids in the intervention group improved two-fold compared to the wait-list kids in terms of their accuracy on cognitive tasks. And we found widespread changes in brain function, which relate to the allocation of attention during cognitive tasks and cognitive processing speed. These changes were significantly greater than those exhibited by the wait-list kids,” said Hillman in a statement.

The findings of the study are published in the journal Pediatrics.