Did you know that exercising during pregnancy can make your child smarter? Here's more on it

According to a new study, exercising for three 20 minute sessions per week during pregnancy can improve the baby’s brain functioning.

For the study, 18 women in their first trimester were divided into two groups. The first group exercised in the form of cycling, walking, running, etc. while the other group did not exercise at all. 

After the babies were born, the researchers compared the brain activity between the babies born to exercising moms and non-exercising moms. They did so by attaching a hairnet of 124 electrodes to sleeping babies and recording EEG (electroencephalograms) while they were played a series of beeps with repeating and new sounds. It was seen that the babies born to exercising mothers could easily differentiate between repeating and new sounds.

The babies born from mothers who were physically active have a more mature cerebral activation, suggesting that their brains developed more rapid. This is important to look at at this stage in their development, because the ability to discriminate sounds is the basis of learning to speak and to understand the sounds around you.