Does Walking Make You Smarter? What the Research Shows
Does walking make you smarter? No study shows walking raises IQ. Trials in older adults show small or no test gains, and a walk briefly boosts creativity.
Dr. Russell T. WarneChief Scientist
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Walking does not make you smarter in the sense of raising your IQ: no trial has measured a gain in general intelligence from a walking program, and the largest trial of a walking-based exercise program, with 1,635 older adults followed for two years, found no difference on cognitive tests. What walking does seem to do is lift idea generation for a short time while you walk, and people who take more steps each day have a lower risk of dementia, a link that is partly explained by people slowing down as dementia begins.
Walking is the most accessible exercise there is, so it attracts big claims about brain health. This page covers what randomized trials of walking show, the creativity study behind many headlines, how to read the step-count and dementia numbers, the evidence on walking backwards and barefoot, and why regular walkers often look sharper than their peers.
What randomized trials of walking show
Most walking trials enroll adults over 55 and measure memory, attention or processing speed. None of the trials I found used a full-scale IQ test as the outcome, so the question they answer is narrower: does a walking program slow or reverse the decline in specific cognitive skills that comes with age?
• The hippocampus trial: Erickson and colleagues randomized 120 sedentary adults aged 55 to 80 to walk around a track for 40 minutes three days a week or to do stretching and toning, for one year. In the walking group the hippocampus, a brain region involved in memory, grew by about 2%, while it shrank by about 1.4% in the stretching group. This is the study behind "walking grows your brain." What headlines usually leave out is that spatial memory improved in both groups, and the walkers did not improve more than the stretchers.
• Pooling the brain-scan trials: Firth and colleagues combined 14 controlled trials of aerobic exercise with 737 participants. They found no significant effect on total hippocampal volume, but a positive effect on the left hippocampus, which came mainly from exercise preventing the shrinkage seen in control groups.
• The largest trial: The LIFE study randomized 1,635 sedentary adults aged 70 to 89 to a two-year program built around walking, with some strength and flexibility work, or to health education classes. At two years, scores on a timed symbol-coding test from the Wechsler intelligence scales differed by 0.01 points on a scale running to 133, and word-list recall differed by 0.03 words. Rates of new mild cognitive impairment or dementia were similar (13.2% against 12.1%). Participants aged 80 or older, and those in the poorest physical shape at the start, showed better changes in executive function, a hint that the frailest people may gain the most.
• Mild cognitive impairment: Lin and colleagues pooled 14 randomized trials of walking in people with "mild cognitive impairment," a stage of measurable memory or thinking problems short of dementia. Walking improved how far people could walk in six minutes (by about 24 meters) but produced no significant improvement in cognitive function compared with no intervention or other exercise.
The fair summary is that walking is good for fitness and may help preserve some brain tissue with age, but trials have not shown a reliable cognitive advantage over light activity, and none has shown a gain in intelligence. Our article on whether exercise can affect your IQ score covers the broader exercise literature, including why short-term boosts after a workout fade.
Walking and creative thinking
The most quoted walking study is about creativity. Oppezzo and Schwartz at Stanford ran four experiments, mostly with university students. In the first, 48 students completed a test of "divergent thinking," the Guilford alternate-uses task, which asks people to list as many uses as they can for an everyday object. They did it once seated and once walking on a treadmill in a plain indoor room.
Walking raised the number of novel ideas for 81% of the students, and the average increase was around 60%. The effect lingered when people sat down again after walking, and walking outdoors produced similar gains. In their fourth experiment, being pushed outdoors in a wheelchair did not produce the same benefit, which suggests that the walking itself mattered, beyond the change of scenery.
Two details matter for anyone reading this as "walking makes you smarter."
• Creativity tests are not IQ tests: Listing unusual uses for a brick measures fluency of ideas. It is related to intelligence but is a different skill, and nothing here was a measure of reasoning ability.
• Convergent thinking got slightly worse: The same students took a remote-associates test, where each puzzle has one correct answer that links three words. Only 23% improved while walking, and as a group they did mildly worse on the treadmill than in the chair.
So the evidence supports a practical, short-lived effect: if you need to brainstorm, a walk may help. It does not show that walking changes anyone's underlying ability.
Steps, dementia and the reverse-causation problem
Headlines in 2022 reported that walking about 10,000 steps a day halves the risk of dementia. The source is a UK Biobank study by del Pozo Cruz and colleagues, who gave wrist accelerometers to 78,430 adults aged 40 to 79 and followed them for a median of 6.9 years, during which 866 developed dementia.
The lowest risk appeared at about 9,800 steps a day (a "hazard ratio" of 0.49, meaning roughly half the rate of dementia over the follow-up). About 3,800 steps a day was linked to a 25% lower risk, and people whose busiest half hour reached 112 steps per minute had the lowest risk of all (hazard ratio 0.38).
These are associations from an observational study. The authors excluded people diagnosed in the first two years, and the results held, but the Whitehall II study shows why two years may not be enough. Sabia and colleagues tracked the physical activity of more than 10,000 British civil servants for up to 28 years. Activity in midlife did not predict dementia (hazard ratio 1.00), but people who went on to develop dementia started becoming less active up to nine years before diagnosis. Brain disease that slows people down years before anyone notices it would make walkers look protected even if walking had no effect.
Walking speed itself is a separate topic. Slow gait is one of the better markers of an ageing brain, and our page on IQ and walking speed explains what it does and does not tell you. For the link between intelligence earlier in life and dementia later, see whether IQ is correlated with dementia.
Walking backwards, barefoot and other tricks
Some walking claims go further than "walk more." Two get repeated often.
• Walking backwards and memory: Aksentijevic and colleagues reported six experiments in which moving backwards, whether by actually walking, watching a video that simulated backward motion, or imagining it, improved recall of a filmed staged crime, word lists or pictures. They called it the "mnemonic time-travel effect." Mieth, Bell and Buchner then ran a preregistered replication of the experiment that had shown the strongest effect, with enough participants to detect a much smaller effect. They found no difference between backward, forward and no motion.
• Barefoot and working memory: In a study of 72 young adults by Alloway and colleagues, working memory scores were higher after about 16 minutes of barefoot running, but only when participants also had to step on small targets scattered on the track. The authors linked the gain to the extra attention needed to avoid hurting bare feet. That was running, the effect was measured minutes later, and I found no study testing whether barefoot walking raises intelligence.
Both are small laboratory effects on a single memory task, and the first has already failed a careful replication. Neither says anything about IQ.
Why regular walkers often look sharper
People who walk a lot do tend to score better on cognitive tests than people who do not, and it is tempting to read that as cause and effect. Several other explanations fit the same pattern.
• Health and mobility: Walking requires working joints, lungs and heart. Conditions that limit walking, such as heart disease and stroke, also harm cognition.
• Education and income: Safe neighborhoods, leisure time and knowledge about health are more common among people with more schooling and money, and both predict higher test scores.
• Reverse causation: As the Whitehall II data show, early brain changes can reduce activity years before diagnosis.
• Baseline fitness and ability: Fitter people find walking easier, and people with higher cognitive ability tend to look after their health in many ways, including exercise.
This is why randomized trials matter, and why their modest results are the better guide. None of this means walking is pointless. It improves fitness and mobility, and the LIFE trial suggests the frailest older adults may gain the most. The evidence simply does not support the stronger claim that walking makes a person more intelligent. The same caution applies to claims about swimming, another popular exercise credited with special brain benefits.
Frequently asked questions
Does walking increase IQ?
No study has shown that it does. Walking trials measure memory and attention in older adults, and the largest one found no difference compared with health education classes after two years.
Is walking good for your brain?
It probably helps preserve some brain tissue with age, and it improves fitness and mobility. Trials have not shown that it improves memory or thinking more than light stretching or education classes.
Does walking make you more creative?
In laboratory studies, people produced more ideas on a divergent-thinking task while walking and shortly afterward. The same people did slightly worse on puzzles with a single correct answer.
How many steps a day are linked to lower dementia risk?
In UK Biobank, the lowest risk was seen at about 9,800 steps a day and some reduction at about 3,800. These are associations, and part of the link may reflect people becoming less active as dementia develops.
Does walking backwards improve memory?
One 2019 paper reported that it did, but a preregistered replication found no effect. The claim is not established.
The takeaway
Walking is good exercise, it may slow some age-related brain shrinkage, and it can give a short boost to brainstorming. Trials have not shown that it improves memory or reasoning more than lighter activity, and no study has shown that it raises IQ. If you want an accurate measure of your reasoning ability as it stands today, take the RIOT IQ test.
References
1. Erickson, K. I., Voss, M. W., Prakash, R. S., Basak, C., Szabo, A., Chaddock, L., Kim, J. S., Heo, S., Alves, H., White, S. M., Wojcicki, T. R., Mailey, E., Vieira, V. J., Martin, S. A., Pence, B. D., Woods, J. A., McAuley, E., & Kramer, A. F. (2011). Exercise training increases size of hippocampus and improves memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(7), 3017-3022. [doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1015950108](. doi.org
2. Firth, J., Stubbs, B., Vancampfort, D., Schuch, F., Lagopoulos, J., Rosenbaum, S., & Ward, P. B. (2018). Effect of aerobic exercise on hippocampal volume in humans: A systematic review and meta-analysis. NeuroImage, 166, 230-238. [doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.11.007](. doi.org
3. Sink, K. M., Espeland, M. A., Castro, C. M., Church, T., Cohen, R., Dodson, J. A., Guralnik, J., Hendrie, H. C., Jennings, J., Katula, J., Lopez, O. L., McDermott, M. M., Pahor, M., Reid, K. F., Rushing, J., Verghese, J., Rapp, S., Williamson, J. D., & LIFE Study Investigators. (2015). Effect of a 24-month physical activity intervention vs health education on cognitive outcomes in sedentary older adults: The LIFE randomized trial. JAMA, 314(8), 781-790. [doi.org/10.1001/jama.2015.9617](. doi.org
4. Lin, J.-C., Chen, I.-H., & Cheng, F.-Y. (2023). Effects of walking on cognitive function in individuals with mild cognitive impairment: A systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Geriatrics, 23, 500. [doi.org/10.1186/s12877-023-04235-z](. doi.org
5. Oppezzo, M., & Schwartz, D. L. (2014). Give your ideas some legs: The positive effect of walking on creative thinking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40(4), 1142-1152. [doi.org/10.1037/a0036577](. doi.org
6. del Pozo Cruz, B., Ahmadi, M., Naismith, S. L., & Stamatakis, E. (2022). Association of daily step count and intensity with incident dementia in 78 430 adults living in the UK. JAMA Neurology, 79(10), 1059-1063. [doi.org/10.1001/jamaneurol.2022.2672](. doi.org
7. Sabia, S., Dugravot, A., Dartigues, J.-F., Abell, J., Elbaz, A., Kivimäki, M., & Singh-Manoux, A. (2017). Physical activity, cognitive decline, and risk of dementia: 28 year follow-up of Whitehall II cohort study. BMJ, 357, j2709. [doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j2709](. doi.org
8. Aksentijevic, A., Brandt, K. R., Tsakanikos, E., & Thorpe, M. J. A. (2019). It takes me back: The mnemonic time-travel effect. Cognition, 182, 242-250. [doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.10.007](. doi.org
9. Mieth, L., Bell, R., & Buchner, A. (2019). The "mnemonic time-travel effect": A preregistered failure to replicate. Experimental Psychology, 66(6), 437-442. [doi.org/10.1027/1618-3169/a000461](. doi.org
10. Alloway, R. G., Alloway, T. P., Magyari, P. M., & Floyd, S. (2016). An exploratory study investigating the effects of barefoot running on working memory. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 122(2), 432-443. [doi.org/10.1177/0031512516640391](. doi.org
Hero image: Footpath through the forest, by John Slater (geograph.org.uk), CC BY-SA 2.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.
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