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(Reuters Health) – Many studies have shown that aerobic exercise can improve cognition in older adults, but a new study shows that vigorous workouts also boost the thinking skills of younger adults.
After a six-month aerobic regimen, adults aged 20 to 67 experienced improvements in executive function – cognitive processes important for reasoning, planning and problem solving – and an enlarged gray substance in the brain, essential to these functions.
A control group that did only stretching and turning during the same period did not see the same benefits, the study team reported in Neurology.
People think that mental decline occurs later in life, said lead author Yaakov Stern, a professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. "But even at age 30, you need help," he said. "Many studies show an almost linear decline in these functions from the 1920s. The message to be learned from this study is that aerobic exercise is really important. "
Noting that no such studies had been conducted in young and middle-aged adults, Stern and his colleagues recruited 132 volunteers aged 20 and over to participate in an experiment to examine the impact of HIV / AIDS. aerobic exercise on cognition and brain structure. None of the volunteers were practitioners before the study.
Volunteers were initially tested to badess executive function, episodic memory, mental processing speed, language skills, and attention. The researchers randomly badigned them to one of two groups: half was included in the aerobics group who did exercise to speed up the heart rate, while the # Another half was badigned to non-aerobic focus and stretching sessions.
Volunteers in each group attended four weekly exercise sessions for 24 weeks. They were tested again for their cognitive abilities at 12 and 24 weeks. MRI scans of their brains were performed at the beginning and at the end of the study.
Eventually, 44 volunteers from the group of aerobics and 50 from the stretching group remained in the study.
By the end of the study period, the cognitive abilities of the stretching and toning group had not increased much, while all the age groups of the group of aerobic activity increased significantly, although the older participants had larger improvements than the younger ones.
MRI scans also showed an increase in the thickness of the frontal cortex of the brain in aerobic users at the end of 24 weeks.
The new study confirms that exercise is "a very promising method for influencing cognitive function," said Kirk Erickson, a professor in the department of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. "This led to the development of US health policies for the use of physical activity to influence cognitive function."
Until now, most research has been conducted on children or older adults "with a notable deficiency in our understanding that exercise has a positive effect throughout life", said Erickson, who did not participate in the new study. E-mail. "This study by Stern and his colleagues is a major step towards reducing this gap by demonstrating that positive effects of exercise could be seen in young adults."
Erickson said the bottom line is that Stern and others 'work suggests that physical activity is a powerful medicine to improve cognitive health and the brain throughout life.'
Erickson said he hoped future studies would confirm new discoveries and also provide a better idea of the exercise parameters (frequency, duration, intensity, volume, types of activities) that are most important. important to improve cognition.
SOURCE: bit.ly/2Uu0Nd4 Neurology, online January 30, 2019.
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