Gym-goers may get frustrated when they don't see results from weightlifting right away, but their efforts are not in vain: the first few weeks of training strengthen the nervous system, not muscles.

The paper I.S. Glover, S.N. Baker, “Cortical, corticospinal, and reticulospinal contributions to strength training,” J Neurosci, 40:5820–32, 2020. Of the two major neural highways that carry messages ...

For decades, scientists have known lifting weights gradually makes you physically stronger. But according to new research, the workout initially changes the brain before changing muscles. In a ...

Infographic: How Weight Lifting Changes Monkeys’ Neural Connections After weeks of training, the muscles of two macaques exhibited greater responses to stimulation of the reticulospinal tract in the ...

The brain orchestrates movement via two major neural highways descending to the spinal cord: the corticospinal tract (CST) and reticulospinal tract (RST). The CST is thought to be the dominant pathway ...