Episode 4 Part 2: Exercise and Cognition with Dr. Lindsay Nagamatsu and Joyla Furlano Artwork

Brain Matter Chatter (BMC)

Welcome to Brain Matter Chatter (BMC), the #AcademicMentalHealth podcast. Our mission is to raise awareness about issues surrounding mental health in Academia. As graduate students, at various stages, studying neuroscience, our hosts bring a unique experiential and scientific perspective to discussions on mental health and illness. To provide a holistic picture of mental health in academia, we aim to bring a diverse set of guests to BMC. Some of our episodes will serve to highlight the experiences of current graduate students. Others will invoke perspectives from our very own faculty advisors, mental health experts, and special guests who will add professional insights to the discussions. Conversations surrounding mental health can be difficult. With this podcast, we hope to make the conversations easier and more accessible. A podcast platform is personal, on-demand, and varies in degree of engagement; listeners can choose when and where they listen, suggest topics that they want to hear discussed, and even appear on episodes as guests. One episode at a time, we hope to begin planting the seeds for change. There isn’t a single, simple solution to the on-going state of mental health in academia. Cultivating a platform for open conversations about #AcademicMentalHealth is the first step.

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Brain Matter Chatter (BMC)

Episode 4 Part 2: Exercise and Cognition with Dr. Lindsay Nagamatsu and Joyla Furlano

August 02, 2021 • A SONGS Production with Ruby, Olivia, Julia, Niveen & Hayley • Season 1 • Episode 4

In part two of the exercise series, Hayley (Host) and Olivia (Co-Host) discuss the cognitive benefits of exercise with Joyla Furlano and Dr. Lindsay Nagamatsu. They touch on sex differences in response to exercise, exercise in aging and disease and exercise as medicine. Joyla is a fourth-year PhD candidate in Neuroscience at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry. She currently works in the Exercise, Mobility and Brain Health Laboratory at Western under the supervision of Dr. Lindsay Nagamatsu. Her doctoral research uses fMRI to examine the effects of resistance exercise on cognitive and brain health in prediabetic and overweight older adults. Dr. Lindsay Nagamatsu is an Assistant Professor in the School of Kinesiology at Western. Her research focuses on examining the effects of exercise on cognition and brain health in at-risk populations, using neuroimaging techniques such as fMRI and EEG to examine underlying functional changes.

Dr. Nagamatsu’s website: https://www.uwo.ca/bmi/investigators/lindsay-nagamatsu.html

Recent articles: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jnr.24830 , https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33358932/