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 After a six-month aerobic regimen, adults aged 20 to 67 showed
improvements in executive function - the cognitive processes
important for reasoning, planning and problem solving - and expanded
gray matter in the brain region central to those functions.
A comparison group that did only stretching and toning during the
same period did not see the same benefits, the study team reports in
Neurology.
People think of mental decline as something that occurs later in
life, said lead author Yaakov Stern, a professor of neuropsychology
at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. "But
even at age 30, you need some help," he said. "Many studies show an
almost linear decline in these functions from the 20s onward. So the
take-home message from this study is that aerobic exercise is really
very important."
Noting that there were no such studies in young and middle-aged
adults, Stern and his colleagues recruited 132 volunteers aged 20
and older to participate in an experiment to look at the impact of
aerobic exercise on cognition and brain structure. None of the
volunteers were exercisers prior to the study.
Volunteers were given tests at the outset to evaluate executive
function, episodic memory, mental processing speed, language
abilities and attention. The researchers randomly assigned them to
one of two groups: half were included in the aerobic group that did
exercise to speed up the heart rate, while the other half were
assigned to sessions of non-aerobic toning and stretching.
The volunteers in each group attended four weekly exercise sessions
for 24 weeks. They were again tested for cognitive abilities at 12
and 24 weeks. MRI scans of their brains were done at the beginning
and end of the study.
Ultimately, 44 volunteers in the aerobic exercise group and 50 in
the stretching group stayed with the study.
By the end of the study period, the stretching and toning group had
not seen much of an increase in cognitive abilities while all ages
in the aerobic group saw significant increases in mental function -
although the older participants showed bigger improvements than the
youngest ones.
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MRI scans also showed an increased thickness in the brain's frontal
cortex in aerobic exercisers at the end of 24 weeks.
The new study confirms that exercise is a "highly promising method
for influencing cognitive function," said Kirk Erickson, a professor
in the department of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, in
Pennsylvania. "This has led to the development of U.S. health
policies for using physical activity to influence cognitive
function."
Until now, most of the research has been conducted in children or
older adults "with a noticeable gap in our understanding of whether
exercise has an enhancing effect throughout the lifespan," Erickson,
who wasn't involved in the new study, said in an email. "This study
by Stern and colleagues takes a major step forward towards closing
this gap by demonstrating that positive effects of exercise might be
found in young-adult age ranges."
The bottom line, Erickson said, is that the work by Stern and others
"suggests physical activity is a powerful medicine for enhancing
brain and cognitive health throughout the lifespan."
Erickson said he hopes future studies will confirm the new findings
and also provide a better sense of which exercise parameters -
frequency, duration, intensity, volume, types of activities - are
most important for improving cognition.
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/2Uu0Nd4 Neurology, online January 30, 2019.
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