Aerobic Fitness is Associated With Hippocampal Volume in Elderly Humans

By Kirk I. Erickson, Ruchika Shaurya Prakash, Michelle W. Voss, L. Chaddock, Liang Hu, Katherine Morris, S. White, T. Wójcicki, E. McAuley, Arthur F. Kramer. Hippocampus, 2009

1,040 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Deterioration of the hippocampus occurs in elderly individuals with and without dementia, yet individual variation exists in the degree and rate of hippocampal decay. Determining the factors that influence individual variation in the magnitude and rate of hippocampal decay may help promote lifestyle changes that prevent such deterioration from taking place. Aerobic fitness and exercise are effective at preventing cortical decay and cognitive impairment in older adults and epidemiological studies suggest that physical activity can reduce the risk for developing dementia. However, the relationship between aerobic fitness and hippocampal volume in elderly humans is unknown. In this study, we investigated whether individuals with higher levels of aerobic fitness displayed greater volume of the hippocampus and better spatial memory performance than individuals with lower fitness levels. Furthermore, in exploratory analyses, we assessed whether hippocampal volume mediated the relationship between fitness and spatial memory. Using a region‐of‐interest analysis on magnetic resonance images in 165 nondemented older adults, we found a triple association such that higher fitness levels were associated with larger left and right hippocampi after controlling for age, sex, and years of education, and larger hippocampi and higher fitness levels were correlated with better spatial memory performance. Furthermore, we demonstrated that hippocampal volume partially mediated the relationship between higher fitness levels and enhanced spatial memory. Our results clearly indicate that higher levels of aerobic fitness are associated with increased hippocampal volume in older humans, which translates to better memory function. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

Subfields: Behavioral Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychiatry and Mental health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3c5e26fc5b95683cb4225965c6529eb2842dc1f3

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Citations in the corpus

The Influence of Exercise on Cognitive Abilities (2013, neutral): “better spatial memory performance (59).”
Brain metabolism in health, aging, and neurodegeneration (2017, positive): “Elderly people that regularly exercise have increased brain volumes in these critical network areas, compared to sedentary subjects that instead undergo a significant volume decline (Colcombe et al, 2006; Erickson et al, 2009; Kerr et al, 2010).”
Muscles and their myokines (2011, background): “Higher levels of cardiovascular fitness are associated with increased hippocampal volume as well as better memory function (Erickson et al., 2009).”
Plasticity of Brain Networks in a Randomized Intervention Trial of Exercise Training in Older Adults (2010, neutral): “Plasticity of brain networks in a randomized intervention trial of exercise training in older adults”
Stress- and Allostasis-Induced Brain Plasticity (2011, positive): “More recent neuroimaging studies report an increase in the volume of gray matter in the prefrontal and temporal cortices (55), increased cerebral blood volume in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus among middle-aged individuals who completed a three-month aerobic exercise program (56), and larger h”
A meta-analytic review of the effects of exercise on brain-derived neurotrophic factor (2014, background): “For example, higher BDNF levels have been associated with better spatial (Erickson et al., 2009; Rex et al., 2006), episodic (Egan et al., 2003), recognition (Komulainen et al., 2008; Whiteman et al., 2014), and verbal memory (Grassi-Oliveira et al., 2008) as well as better hippocampal functioning…”
Effects of Physical Exercise on Cognitive Functioning and Wellbeing: Biological and Psychological Benefits (2018, background): “…with potent structural and functional neuroplastic changes, with an improvement in cognitive functions (Colcombe et al., 2006; Hillman et al., 2008; Erickson et al., 2009; Mandolesi et al., 2017) and increased feeling of general wellbeing (Berger and Tobar, 2011; Biddle et al., 2011) (Table 4).”
Exercise training increases size of hippocampus and improves memory (2011, methodology): “To test memory function, all participants completed a computerized spatial memory task at baseline, after 6 mo, and again after completion of the intervention (13, 22, 43).”
A Review of the Effects of Physical Activity and Exercise on Cognitive and Brain Functions in Older Adults (2013, positive): “[56] performed a region-of-interest analysis on magnetic resonance images in 165 nondemented older adults and found that higher fitness levels were associated with larger left and right hippocampi that further correlatedwith better spatialmemory performance.”
Brain on stress: How the social environment gets under the skin (2012, background): “This finding complements work showing that fit individuals have larger hippocampal volumes than sedentary adults of the same age range (54).”