Sport is good for the body and mind

Larissa Melville completed her traineeship in the editorial team of . After studying biology at Ludwig Maximilians University and the Technical University of Munich, she first got to know digital media online at Focus and then decided to learn medical journalism from scratch.

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Memory performance decreases with age. The brain becomes forgetful and slow. But there is one simple way to prevent this: exercise.

Several studies have already shown that physical fitness has a positive effect on mental fitness - especially in old age. Exercise can improve memory, alertness, and thinking skills in seniors. Now researchers working with Hideaki Soya from Tsukuba University have confirmed these results for the first time with an imaging method and have shown what exactly happens in the brain: Physically fit men were capable of better mental performance compared to less fit - because they use other brain regions, namely the same as teenagers.

The word "green" in red

For their study, the team examined 60 men aged 64 to 75 years. At the beginning, all subjects did a physical stress test in which the maximum oxygen uptake was measured. The researchers then tested the mental fitness and, in particular, the brain activity and reaction time of the study participants with the help of the so-called color-word interference test.

During the test, the researchers showed the men a projection screen and asked them to name the color of the words on it without reading the word. That sounds easy, but it is difficult - especially if the color and the word do not match, for example the word “green” is written in red. Then the brain has to work harder and takes longer. This reaction time is generally used as a measure of brain function.

Oxygen as an indicator of brain activity

During the entire test, the researchers also recorded the brain function with the help of so-called near-infrared spectroscopy. In this procedure, the blood oxygen concentration in the surface blood vessels of the brain is determined. Active brain cells need oxygen. This is transported via the blood and the oxygen-poor blood is displaced in the process. Therefore, the higher the oxygen concentration at one point in the brain, the higher the activity there.

Left side brings better results

The researchers were able to determine that the physically fitter seniors had shorter reaction times compared to those who did not exercise and that more stressed the left side of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The PFC is right behind the forehead and processes incoming information. The sporty elderly did the same as the youngsters, because they also mainly use the left side. Older people, on the other hand, tend to use both sides of the PFC. This phenomenon is called HAROLD (hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults). It is based on the compensation of the decreased brain capacity and efficiency in old age as a result of age-related decline.

“One possible explanation for the results is that the volume and integrity of the white matter connecting the two sides in this region of the brain decrease with age. There is some evidence that physically fit adults are better at maintaining this white matter than unfit adults, ”says Soya. But more studies are needed to confirm this theory.

Sources:

Press release of the University of Tsukuba from October 23, 2015

Hyodo K. et al .: The association between aerobic fitness and cognitive function in older men mediated by frontal lateralization. NeuroImage. In Press, Uncorrected Proof. doi: 10.1016 / j.neuroimage.2015.09.062

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