In a recent health research paper published by Springer Nature's professional academic journal Nature Human Behavior, researchers conducted an umbrella review of 24 meta-analyses, pointing out that for healthy individuals, there is little evidence that regular physical exercise has a positive relationship with improved cognition. The researchers cautioned that the results of this study did not rule out the potential cognitive benefits of exercise in healthy people, but emphasized that there is currently very little evidence to support this association. According to the paper, regular exercise is considered not only to be beneficial for physical health, but also to have a positive impact on cognition and cognitive performance. These findings have been used to guide public health policies, and some institutions currently recommend regular exercise as a way to maintain a healthy cognitive state. Luis Ciria, the first author and co author of the paper, and colleagues and collaborators at the University of Granada, Spain, reviewed 24 meta-analyses containing 271 basic studies, followed by 109 studies covering 11266 healthy subjects. These test subjects are limited to studies that have conducted detailed randomized controlled trials, which are typically used to search for causal relationships. They found that the small, statistically significant positive impact of physical exercise on cognition found at the beginning of the trial disappeared after taking into account potential regulatory variables (such as differences between the control group and the study baseline) and correcting for publication bias. The authors emphasize that their findings do not indicate that physical exercise has no positive impact on cognitive function at all, nor does it indicate that physical exercise may be harmful to cognition. However, they believe that caution needs to be exercised when establishing a causal relationship between exercise and cognition, as there is currently no reliable causal evidence. The authors conclude that although their research shows that the positive cognitive impact of regular exercise may be negligible, the benefits of exercise, especially for physical health, are in themselves sufficient to support evidence-based public health policies that encourage people to maintain exercise habits in their daily lives. (Liao Xinshe)