> researchers at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, recruited 75 healthy young men and women and randomly assigned them to workspaces outfitted with a computer and either a chair or a treadmill desk....Then the volunteers were asked to complete a series of tests of their manual and mental dexterity...The manual task was simple enough, consisting of using the keyboard to type words that flashed onto the computer screen as quickly and accurately as possible while the volunteer either sat or slowly walked.

> The cognitive tests were more demanding, designed to measure practical aspects of cognition, such as working memory and delayed recall, and the ability to concentrate, all of which are important in performing office work. In one of these tests, volunteers had to learn and later recall lists of words; in another, they were asked to juggle lists of numbers and add them up in their heads even as new numbers were added to the list...

> The results, when the researchers compared the treadmill walkers with the people sitting at their desks, substantially favored sitting. The people who had walked during the testing performed worse on almost all aspects of thinking, including the ability to concentrate and remember, compared with those who had been seated.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/the-downside-of-tre...