Aerobic exercise may improve memory in older adults: study

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U.S. researchers said Tuesday that aerobic exercise may help older adults improve their memory, brain health and physical fitness.

Researchers at the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas studied 37 cognitively healthy sedentary adults aged 57 to 75, who were randomized into a physical training or a wait-list control group. The physical training group participated in supervised aerobic exercise on a stationary bike or treadmill for one hour, three times a week for 12 weeks.

Participants' cognition, resting cerebral blood flow, and cardiovascular fitness were assessed at three time points: before beginning the physical exercise regimen, mid-way through at 6 weeks, and post-training at 12 weeks.

"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," Sina Aslan, founder and president of Texas-based Advance MRI and one of the paper's authors, said in a statement.

Exercisers who improved their memory performance also showed greater increase in brain blood flow to the hippocampus, the key brain region affected by Alzheimer's disease, the researchers said.

They said that using noninvasive brain imaging techniques, brain changes were identified earlier than memory improvements, implicating brain blood flow as a promising and sensitive metric of brain health gains across treatment regimens.

"Physical exercise may be one of the most beneficial and cost- effective therapies widely available to everyone to elevate memory performance," Sandra Bond Chapman, founder and chief director of the Center for BrainHealth and the paper's lead author said. " These findings should motivate adults of all ages to start exercising aerobically."

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."

The findings were published on-line in the open-access journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience.

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