Study: Aerobic exercise improves memory, brain function

Study Finds Aer­o­bic Exer­cise Improves Mem­o­ry, Brain Func­tion and Phys­i­cal Fit­ness (press release):

• “A new study con­duct­ed by researchers at the Cen­ter for Brain­Health at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Dal­las pub­lished online in the open-access jour­nal Fron­tiers in Aging Neu­ro­science found that engag­ing in a phys­i­cal exer­cise reg­i­men helps healthy aging adults improve their mem­o­ry, brain health and phys­i­cal fitness.
• “By mea­sur­ing brain blood flow non-inva­sive­ly using arte­r­i­al spin label­ing (ASL) MRI, we can now begin to detect brain changes much ear­li­er than before,” said Sina Aslan, Ph.D., founder and pres­i­dent of Advance MRI and col­lab­o­ra­tor on the study. “One key region where we saw increase in brain blood flow was the ante­ri­or cin­gu­late, indi­cat­ing high­er neu­ronal activ­i­ty and meta­bol­ic rate. The ante­ri­or cin­gu­late has been linked to supe­ri­or cog­ni­tion in late life.”
• Chap­man cau­tioned that while phys­i­cal exer­cise is asso­ci­at­ed with a selec­tive or region­al brain blood flow, it did not pro­duce a change in glob­al brain blood flow. “In anoth­er recent study, we have shown that com­plex men­tal train­ing increas­es whole brain blood flow as well as region­al brain blood flow across key brain net­works,” Chap­man said. “The com­bi­na­tion of phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise may be the best health mea­sures to improve over­all cog­ni­tive brain health. We have just begun to test the upper bound­aries of how we can enhance our brain’s per­for­mance into late life. To think we can alter and improve the basic struc­ture of the mature brain through aer­o­bic exer­cise and com­plex think­ing should inspire us to chal­lenge our think­ing and get mov­ing at any age.”

Study: Short­er term aer­o­bic exer­cise improves brain, cog­ni­tion, and car­dio­vas­cu­lar fit­ness in aging (Fron­tiers in Aging Neuroscience)

• Abstract: Phys­i­cal exer­cise, par­tic­u­lar­ly aer­o­bic exer­cise, is doc­u­ment­ed as pro­vid­ing a low cost reg­i­men to counter well-doc­u­ment­ed cog­ni­tive declines includ­ing mem­o­ry, exec­u­tive func­tion, visu­ospa­tial skills, and pro­cess­ing speed in nor­mal­ly aging adults. Pri­or aging stud­ies focused large­ly on the effects of medi­um to long term (>6 months) exer­cise train­ing; how­ev­er, the short­er term effects have not been stud­ied. In the present study, we exam­ined changes in brain blood flow, cog­ni­tion, and fit­ness in 37 cog­ni­tive­ly healthy seden­tary adults (57–75 years of age) who were ran­dom­ized into phys­i­cal train­ing or a wait-list con­trol group. The phys­i­cal train­ing group received super­vised aer­o­bic exer­cise for 3 ses­sions per week 1 h each for 12 weeks…These data sug­gest that even short­er term aer­o­bic exer­cise can facil­i­tate neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty to reduce both the bio­log­i­cal and cog­ni­tive con­se­quences of aging to ben­e­fit brain health in seden­tary adults.

Relat­ed arti­cles:

• Phys­i­cal Exer­cise and Brain Health
• Brain plas­tic­ity: How learn­ing changes your brain