Multitasking during exercise doesn’t decrease effort. Catching up on your favorite TV show might seem like a great way to take your mind off of sitting on the exercise bike, but many had worried that this sort of distraction might make the watcher slack off. Not so, according to new data released this week. “For the study, a team of researchers from the University of Florida asked 28 participants with Parkinson’s disease and 20 healthy older adults to complete a series of 12 increasingly difficult cognitive tasks while exercising on a stationary bicycle. Participants cycled 25 percent faster while performing the six easiest cognitive tasks. They slowed down as the tasks became more difficult, but never fell below their baseline cycling rate.” The researchers originally thought cyclists would slow when they took their mind off of the activity at hand, but were surprised to find that speed increased. “They explained that when a person exercises, a certain amount of physiological arousal occurs in the brain, which releases specific neurotransmitters, chemicals that send information throughout the brain and body. The team thinks that the arousing effect in the brain could facilitate motor performance.”