Physical activity and aerobic exercise helps keep brain
healthy

Regardless of gender, young adults who have greater aerobic
fitness also have greater volume of their entorhinal cortex, an area of the
brain responsible for memory. Better aerobic fitness however does not appear to
impact hippocampal volume, another area in the brain responsible for
memory.

Regardless of gender, young adults who have greater
aerobic fitness also have greater volume of their entorhinal cortex, an area of
the brain responsible for memory. Better aerobic fitness however does not
appear to impact hippocampal volume, another area in the brain responsible for memory.

While aerobic fitness is not directly associated with
performance on a recognition memory task, the participants with a larger
entorhinal cortex also performed better on the recognition memory task. These
findings by Boston University School of medicine (BUSM) researchers appear in
the journal NeuroImage.

The entorhinal cortex is a brain area known to show early
pathology in Alzheimer’s disease, which is characterized by profound memory
impairment. Because of the strong association between hippocampal cell growth
and exercise in models, previous work on exercise and the brain has not focused
on the entorhinal cortex, despite its critical role in learning and memory
until now.

The researchers recruited healthy young adults (ages
18-35 years) who underwent a treadmill test to measure aerobic capacity. During
this test, the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the participants’ breath
as they walked or ran on a treadmill was measured. Participants then underwent
magnetic resonance imaging and performed a recognition memory task. Entorhinal
and hippocampal volume was determined using a method known as voxel-based
morphometry and then regression analysis to examine whether recognition memory
and aerobic fitness predicted brain volumes.

“Our results suggest that aerobic exercise may have
a positive effect on the medial temporal lobe memory system (which includes the
entorhinal cortex) in healthy young adults. This suggests that exercise
training, when designed to increase aerobic fitness, might have a positive
effect on the brain in healthy young adults,” explained corresponding
author and principal investigator Karin Schon, PhD, BUSM assistant professor of
anatomy and neurobiology. The researchers point out that unlike previous work
done in older adults, in this young adult sample hippocampal volume does not
show an association with aerobic fitness.

Researchers said this work could support previous studies
that suggest aerobic exercise may forestall cognitive decline in older
individuals at risk of dementia, and extends the idea that exercise may be
beneficial for brain health to younger adults. “This is critical given
that obesity, which has recently been linked with cognitive deficits in young
and middle-aged adults, and physical inactivity are on the rise in young
adults,” Schon said.

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