A research group from Japan looked at the effect of aerobic exercise on divergent and convergent thinking and the role the state of mind after exercise has on this process. Divergent thinking is what is meant when talking about "thinking outside the box," creative thinking, or evaluating multiple solutions to the same problem. Instead, convergent thinking is searching for the most plausible answer to a problem, through logic and reflection. Evidence shows that various forms of exercise, even performed briefly, can improve cognitive functions.

However, they found that the effect of exercise on creative thinking and the role of mood on this process remain mostly understudied, according to them. They looked at forty healthy, young adults. They were randomly assigned a 15-minute exercise, such as cycling on an exercise bike, or control intervention (reading a book), before and after which they performed an alternative use test measuring divergent thinking and an insight problem-solving task measuring convergent thinking. It turns out that movement promotes divergent thinking by increasing "cognitive fluency" and "flexibility. This fluency, or fluidity, is the ease with which our brain can process (new) information. Cognitive flexibility is the degree to which we can flexibly switch between certain cognitive tasks. It is also the underlying mechanism by which we can adequately adapt our behavior to new situations. Thus, it makes it easier to arrive at creative solutions and to think divergently.

These results did not appear to depend on mood after exercise in terms of pleasure and strength. Thus, for successful divergent thinking, how you feel after moving does not matter. In contrast, it does matter for convergent thinking. Subjects reporting high decisiveness after moving tended to solve problems with insight that were previously unsolved. While those who showed low decisiveness or enthusiasm were less able to solve previously unsolved problems. This suggests that movement has an effect on cognitive processes, but that it affects divergent and convergent thinking in different ways. However, convergent thinking does depend on your mood after movement and divergent thinking does not. So it's interesting to see that exercise has a positive effect on your cognition anyway, whether you're happy or not. But for logical reasoning, you really have to be in a good mood. Who knows, maybe your clients will suddenly puzzle like crazy after a route on Bike Labyrinth!