Jakarta, ThedailyID — Walking may offer benefits beyond physical health and weight management. A study published in Scientific Reports in October 2026 linked higher daily step counts to better performance in several cognitive tests.
Researchers analyzed data from 3,093 adults in the United States. Participants who moved more tended to perform better on tests measuring attention and decision-making.
The team examined activity records, cognitive test results, and blood pressure measurements. The data came from the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us research program. Participants ranged from 18 to 93 years old, with an average age of around 58.
“In several cognitive domains, individuals in the more active groups tended to perform better on cognitive measures,” said psychiatrist Olaoluwa Okusaga of Baylor College of Medicine, one of the study’s researchers, according to ScienceAlert.
How many daily steps were linked to better cognitive performance?
Researchers used Fitbit records to measure participants’ physical activity. The available records covered the period from 2009 to 2023, although not everyone had data for the entire period.
Based on their average daily steps, researchers divided participants into three groups. The groups averaged 5,108, 8,875, and 14,161 steps per day.
Starting in September 2023, participants completed cognitive tests. These assessed sustained attention, the ability to ignore distractions, preferences for immediate or delayed rewards, and facial emotion recognition.
The two groups with higher step counts performed better than the least active group on attention, distraction control, and reward-choice tests.
After adjusting for age, education, income, marital status, and birthplace, researchers estimated that the middle activity group scored 1.76 points higher on attention tests than the least active group. The most active group scored 2.17 points higher.
However, the differences were relatively small. Researchers also cautioned that these findings do not establish a specific daily step target for improving attention.
“Our study is observational and was not designed to determine the optimal daily step count for cognitive health,” Okusaga said.
How walking relates to thinking and blood pressure
The findings add to research exploring links between daily movement and brain function. The cognitive abilities tested may also matter in everyday situations.
“These could include maintaining concentration at work, avoiding impulsive decisions, and sticking to long-term goals such as saving money or following a health plan,” Okusaga said.
Researchers also found a more limited association involving blood pressure. Higher systolic blood pressure, the upper number in a blood pressure reading, was linked to slightly poorer performance on reward-choice tests.
Further analysis suggested that lower systolic blood pressure statistically accounted for about 5% of the association between step counts and reward-choice scores. However, this does not prove that lowering blood pressure improves cognitive performance.
The study also has important limitations. Researchers tested cognitive function only once, so they could not determine whether participants’ abilities improved or declined over time. Existing cognitive abilities may also influence how physically active a person becomes.
“Our findings support an association between long-term physical activity and later cognitive performance, but they do not prove that physical activity causes better cognitive abilities,” Okusaga said.
Further research and repeated cognitive assessments are needed to clarify how walking habits relate to brain function over time.
