Abstract
"Mens sana in corpore sano". This quote from the Roman poet Juvenal summarizes the common belief that a bond between physical health and cognition exists. Even though the link between "body and mind" has been one of the enduring legacies of "Some Thoughts Concerning Education" (the Locke's treatise on philosophy of education (Locke, 1996) that has provided the basis for future development of pedagogy as science), the scientific effort to demonstrate the reality of this connection has been slow to build up.
Indeed, the scientific literature on issues concerning physical activity has grown continuously only in the last decades and most of it was due to interest on health. A search on PubMed for the items "physical activity human" shows that in 1985 the number of published papers was 1366 but that increased up to 23353 in 2015. Within these numbers, the publications addressing "physical activity cognition" were just 32 in 1985 and 1026 in 2015. Based on this studies, a large consensus has been reached on the role of physical activity in reducing preventable and avoidable mortality and disability due to noncommunicable diseases, such as cardiovascular and chronic respiratory diseases, cancer, diabetes (Katzmarzyk, Church, Craig, & Bouchard, 2009; Tremblay, Colley, Saunders, Healy, & Owen, 2010). Accordingly, most of the international organizations concerned with health (WHO - World Health Organization WHO, NASPSPA - North American Society for Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity, AAP - American Academy of Pediatrics, AHA – American Heart Association) have published recommendations to encourage health by preventing sedentary behavior and promoting the practice of physical activity (Tremblay et al., 2012).