10/22/2025
Does Pickleball Make You Smarter?
It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that playing pickleball is tons of fun and healthy.
But why exactly is it so healthy? Yeah, we're gonna need a brain specialist for that. 🧠
Enter Dr. Daniel Amen, the well-known, sometimes controversial, 12-time New York Times best-selling author and psychiatrist, who has devoted his career to studying the human brain.
Amen says that people who play racket sports “live longer than everybody else." But why?
Well, evidently much of it has to do with the cerebellum or "little brain," which makes up only 10% of the brain's volume, but has more than 50% of its neurons.
One of the cerebellum's major functions is physical coordination — but also thought coordination and how quickly you can process information.
Dr. Amen maintains that racket sports like table tennis or pickleball work out the cerebellum because of the reflexes required for seeing and reacting to the ball.
The strategic thinking involved in quickly deciding not just how to hit the ball, but where to place it and what to anticipate next, activates other parts of the brain, including the parietal and frontal lobes.
For those reasons, Amen believes that racket sports provide a tremendous "whole brain exercise," which is why he often tells his patients to take up a racket sport for improved brain function and a longer life. 💪
