It’s official, juggling increases brainpower.

Jo Bolton was invited along to talk with Bernadette Young on The Afternoon Show, 720 ABC Radio about the benefits of learning to juggle.

Jo talked about the importance of accepting mistakes in the process of learning new skills & introduced some of the history of the game. Bernadette & Alex (Producer) even had a go at juggling, well done!

The interview was inspired by the report of a new study by Oxford University which examined how the act of learning to juggle affects the brain.

The study used MRI technology to examine changes in the brains of 24 young adult volunteers, none of whom could juggle. 12 people participated in a 6 week juggling course, the other 12 did not.

After 6 weeks the MRI scans showed a 5% increase in the 'white matter' in a rear section of the brain called the intraparietal sulcus for the jugglers.

In a BBC news article Professor Cathy Price, of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, said: "It's extremely exciting to see evidence that training changes human white matter connections. This complements other work showing grey matter changes with training and motivates further work to understand the cellular mechanisms underlying these effects."

The article went on to say:

There was a great variation in the ability of the volunteers to juggle but all of them showed changes in white matter.

The Oxford team said this must be down to the time spent training and practising rather than the level of skill attained.

Researchers also mentioned that the findings may have long term benefits in the field of neurological disease such as Multiple Sclerosis.