Physical Exercise and Brain Health

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Fab­re and col­leagues, in 1999, ran­dom­ly assigned sub­jects to 4 groups: an aer­o­bic train­ing group (walk­ing or run­ning for 2 h per week for 2 months), a mem­o­ry train­ing group (one 90 min ses­sion a week for 2 months), a com­bined aer­o­bic and men­tal train­ing group, or a con­trol group (no training).

Results showed that com­pared to the con­trol group, the mem­o­ry per­for­mance of all 3 groups increased. The com­bined group showed greater increase than the oth­er 2 train­ing groups.

This sug­gests that the effects of cog­ni­tive and fit­ness train­ing may be addi­tive. How­ev­er this study involved only 8 par­tic­i­pants per group! More research is clear­ly need­ed before any­thing can be safe­ly concluded.

In the mean­time let’s play it safe and com­bine fit­ness and cog­ni­tive train­ing for bet­ter brain health.

Ref­er­ences

Col­combe, S. & Kramer, A. F. (2003). Fit­ness effects on the cog­ni­tive func­tion of old­er adults: A meta-ana­lyt­ic study. Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence, 14(2), 125–130.

Col­combe, S. J., Erick­son, K. I., Scalf, P. E., Kim, J. S., Prakash, R., McAuley, E., Elavsky, S., Mar­quez, D. X., Hu, L., & Kramer, A. F. (2006). Aer­o­bic exer­cise train­ing increas­es brain vol­ume in aging humans. Jour­nal of Geron­tol­ogy, 61A(11), 1166–1170.

Fab­re, C., Msse-Biron, J., Chamari, K., Var­ray, A., Muc­ci, P., & Pre­faut, C. (1999). Eval­u­a­tion of qual­i­ty of life in elder­ly healthy sub­jects after aer­o­bic and/or men­tal train­ing. Archives of Geron­tol­ogy and Geri­atrics, 28, 9–22.

Heyn P.; Abreu B. C.; Otten­bach­er K. J. (2004). The effects of exer­cise train­ing on elder­ly per­sons with cog­ni­tive impair­ment and demen­tia: a meta-analy­sis. Archives of phys­i­cal med­i­cine and reha­bil­i­ta­tion, 85(10), 1694–704.

Lau­rin, D., Ver­reault, R., Lind­say, J., MacPher­son, K., & Rock­wood, K. (2001). Phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and risk of cog­ni­tive impair­ment and demen­tia in elder­ly per­sons. Archives of Neu­rol­o­gy, 58(3), 498–504.

Pascale Michelon— Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon helped research and write The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: How to Opti­mize Brain Health and Per­for­mance at Any Age. She has a Ph.D. in Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­o­gy and is a Research Sci­en­tist at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in Saint Louis, in the Psy­chol­o­gy Depart­ment. She con­duct­ed sev­er­al research projects to under­stand how the brain makes use of visu­al infor­ma­tion and mem­o­rizes facts.

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  1. ozee says

    Hel­lo.

    By doing a lit­tle read­ing on your great web­site I under­stand there is a great empha­sis on how to keep the brain sharp and I am must admit many great tips. How­ev­er in my opin­ion phys­i­cal exer­cise appears to give more val­ue to bet­ter brain health in gen­er­al than doing men­tal exer­cis­es. This is because when doing men­tal exer­cise it is vir­tu­al­ly min­i­mal to see a pos­i­tive trans­fer affect oth­er than the task you train­ing in.

    With phys­i­cal exer­cise there is gen­er­al trans­fer effect and until proved oth­er­wise there should be more empha­sis on phys­i­cal exer­cise than men­tal stimulation.

  2. Alvaro says

    Hel­lo Ozee,

    Thanks for the com­ment. Giv­en the exist­ing evi­dence, we have decid­ed in favor of a mul­ti-pronged approach, that high­lights the ben­e­fits of phys­i­cal exer­cise, men­tal stim­u­la­tion, stress man­age­ment and good nutrition.

    This approach is con­sis­tent with excel­lent recent pub­lic health efforts led by the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion and the Dana Foun­da­tion For Brain Ini­tia­tives, both of which are ground­ed on four close-to-iden­ti­cal pil­lars or factors.

    Why a mul­ti-pronged approach vs. a “one size fits all”?

    Because dif­fer­ent bod­ies of research sug­gest the ben­e­fits of dif­fer­ent approach­es, and there is few research con­trast­ing their inter­ac­tions direct­ly (as Dr. Mich­e­lon points above).

    For exam­ple, advo­cat­ing that “there should be more empha­sis on phys­i­cal exer­cise than men­tal stim­u­la­tion” would ignore a large body of Cog­ni­tive Reserve research on the ben­e­fits of life­long edu­ca­tion and men­tal stim­u­la­tion to reduce the prob­a­bil­i­ty of devel­op­ing Alzheimer’s symp­toms, very sol­id large-scale clin­i­cal tri­als such as ACTIVE, and many con­trolled tri­als that show the ben­e­fits of well-direct­ed men­tal exer­cise like med­i­ta­tion, cog­ni­tive ther­a­py, com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing, for spe­cif­ic pop­u­la­tions and goals.

    Anoth­er exam­ple on why a “one size fits all” is not the best approach: the ben­e­fits of phys­i­cal exer­cise are most­ly based on mov­ing peo­ple from Seden­tary to Slight­ly Active. Now, there are many peo­ple who are not Seden­tary, who may ben­e­fit from oth­er approaches.

    So, I would turn the tables, and say that, right now, most brain health pub­lic edu­ca­tion efforts are based on a mul­ti-pronged approach and if any­one wants to focus exclu­sive­ly on one fac­tor for every­one and every­thing will have to prove a more sol­id case than the one avail­abe on exist­ing data today.

  3. Glnn says

    Men­tal exer­cis­es that would have a pos­i­tive trans­fer effect to oth­er men­tal tasks
    are exer­cis­es in atten­tion and concentration.
    Med­i­ta­tion is the sim­plest exam­ple of this.

  4. Scott Hagwood says

    Does phys­i­cal exer­cise, in humans, con­tribute to neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis? If so, would cog­ni­tive exer­cise then nur­ture the new cells cre­at­ing brain volume?

  5. Alvaro says

    Scott, very well put, that seems to be the case.

    Now, it is per­haps not “vol­ume” that grows (our skulls lim­it over­all vol­ume) but den­si­ty and weight, over­all and in spe­cif­ic brain struc­tures. Pret­ty amaz­ing, isn’t it?

  7. Shane says

    Per­fect expla­na­tion and good to read and get­ting good tips like this will help me in my rou­tine of exercises..It will be more effec­tive with the help of Aer­o­bic dance too..

  8. Glenn says

    As a Phys­i­cal Edu­ca­tor, it’s great to have this infor­ma­tion avail­able. Do you have any research sim­i­lar to Col­combe and Kramer that sup­ports sim­i­lar find­ings in chil­dren and youth?

    Please keep up the great work.

  9. Joe Herzog says

    The research gath­ered by Dr. Ratey (Spark, A User’s Guide to The Brain, Dr. John Med­i­na (Brain Rules) and Dr. Car­la Han­naford (Smart Moves) among oth­ers gives phys­i­cal edu­ca­tors a wealth of evi­dence to present to school admin­is­tra­tions about the val­ue of qual­i­ty phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion. It should also moti­vate the entire phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion com­mu­ni­ty to take a hard look at cur­rent cur­ricu­lum and the need to make changes that brings it more in line with stu­dents long term needs, social, emo­tion­al, phys­i­cal and cognitive.