Weather Moods

I saw the following exerpt from a Luminosity web site today and it got me thinking about motivation once again.  If the brain functions better in better weather then wouldn't our motivation to exercise be stronger when the weather is better.  I wonder what the propensity to exercise in the winter is like in the South versus the North in the winter and vice versa in the summer?  To counter the impacts of weather on motivation, my theory is that there is an impact, I think that Exercise centers should design their facilities to bright, airy and fresh.  Lighting technology today is amazing and I hope that Exercise Companies are taing advantage of the technology to counter the moods of weather!

As the winter wears on outside of Lumosity's San Francisco headquarters, we're pondering this question: can bad weather be bad for your brain?

In some cases, wintry weather can lead to seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a seasonally recurring depression linked to  limited sunlight exposure during winter months. Research shows that about half of non-depressed people have some degree of SAD symptoms during the winter.

But seasonal affective disorder doesn't just change your mood. A Psychological Science study showed that seasons can impact cognitive processes such as memory and speed. The study found that students' mood ratings and memory performance improved when the weather was better, especially on days with more sunlight. In an experimental manipulation, students who took a memory assessment indoors performed worse than students who took the same test outdoors on a warm, sunny day.
Given that research suggests a link between warm weather and enhanced cognition, we turned to our own database of cognitive performance to assess the effects of the seasons on Lumosity game performance. 
We looked at scores from the popular free game Memory Matrix to answer this question. Our analysis included only adults in North America, to control for seasonal differences in daylight and weather in the Southern Hemisphere. 
Members who started playing Memory Matrix during the winter months (December, January, and February) had significantly lower initial scores than those who started playing during the three other seasons. However, after just five sessions of training, winter Memory Matrix scores improved as much or even more than those in other seasons.  By the fifth training session, Memory Matrix scores had improved and were at about the same level across all seasons.
So though initial game scores affirmed prior research linking bad weather to poor performance, we also found that people can significantly improve memory in any season.

Teamwork

Motivation can be from one's self and from a team.  Sometimes a combination is what it takes to keep going.  You have to want to train but when your motivation is ebbing there is nothing like a team mate with a similar goal to keep you going.  Enjoy this link.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/rhode_island/articles/2012/02/15/ri_researchers_find_weight_loss_may_be_contagious/