> 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...

Yeah, but:

> None of the participants had used a treadmill desk before, so they received a few minutes of instruction and practice

A few minutes? Jeez, I'd expect that getting acclimated to a completely different way to work would take at least several weeks or months.

Fair enough, I guess. This still lowers my expectation that there is a significant positive improvement in the long term, and is strong evidence against the sort of anecdotal claims that "you immediately feel better and more alert" that I hear all the time.

I think something else that could have impacted their results is that for some people, the knowledge that they are being tested changes the way they think/perform quite drastically. When I sit at a desk and do menial work, I get restless and my productivity plummets. But if you tell me that I'm being assessed, and you give me a straightforward task, I will have no trouble focusing on it for at least an hour. Maybe treadmill desks help you stay on task, but at the same time inhibit your cognitive performance slightly.

But this only looks at walking while doing another task. How about a short walk and then sitting for the test?