Physical activity has direct and indirect effects on brain function in health and disease. Findings demonstrating that physical activity improves cognitive and non-cognitive functions and is preventive for several neuropsychiatric disorders have attracted particular interest. This short review focuses on sports and physical exercise in normal brain function and summarizes which mechanisms might underlie the observed effects, which methodological problems exist, which relationships exist to concepts of plasticity and neural reserves and what evolutionary relevance the initially surprising finding that physical exercise is good for the brain has.