Mens sana in corpore sano, sometimes old sayings are being confirmed by today science.  Researchers report that children who are physically fit have faster and more robust neuro-electrical brain responses during reading than their less-fit peers. These differences correspond with better language skills in the children who are more fit, and occur whether they’re reading straightforward sentences or sentences that contain errors of grammar or syntax.

But do note, this research is about a link, not about a cause. Whether the difference is caused by fitness or maybe some third variable that (affects) both fitness and language processing, the researchers don’t know yet.  But this study shows that the brain function of higher fit kids is different, in the sense that they appear to be able to better allocate resources in the brain towards aspects of cognition that support reading comprehension

Abstract of the research:

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) have been instrumental for discerning the relationship between children’s aerobic fitness and aspects of cognition, yet language processing remains unexplored. ERPs linked to the processing of semantic information (the N400) and the analysis of language structure (the P600) were recorded from higher and lower aerobically fit children as they read normal sentences and those containing semantic or syntactic violations. Results revealed that higher fit children exhibited greater N400 amplitude and shorter latency across all sentence types, and a larger P600 effect for syntactic violations. Such findings suggest that higher fitness may be associated with a richer network of words and their meanings, and a greater ability to detect and/or repair syntactic errors. The current findings extend previous ERP research explicating the cognitive benefits associated with greater aerobic fitness in children and may have important implications for learning and academic performance.