Effects of Aerobic Exercise on Mild Cognitive Impairment
By L. Baker, L. Frank, K. Foster-Schubert, P. Green, C. Wilkinson, A. McTiernan, S. Plymate, G. Watson, B. Cholerton, G. Duncan and 2 more. Archives of Neurology, 2010
1,208 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Objectives To examine the effects of aerobic exercise on cognition and other biomarkers associated with Alzheimer disease pathology for older adults with mild cognitive impairment, and assess the role of sex as a predictor of response. Design Six-month, randomized, controlled, clinical trial. Setting Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System clinical research unit. Participants Thirty-three adults (17 women) with amnestic mild cognitive impairment ranging in age from 55 to 85 years (mean age,70 years). Intervention Participants were randomized either to a high-intensity aerobic exercise or stretching control group. The aerobic group exercised under the supervision of a fitness trainer at 75% to 85% of heart rate reserve for 45 to 60 min/d, 4 d/wk for 6 months. The control group carried out supervised stretching activities according to the same schedule but maintained their heart rate at or below 50% of their heart rate reserve. Before and after the study, glucometabolic and treadmill tests were performed and fat distribution was assessed using dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry. At baseline, month 3, and month 6, blood was collected for assay and cognitive tests were administered. Main Outcome Measures Performance measures on Symbol-Digit Modalities, Verbal Fluency, Stroop, Trails B, Task Switching, Story Recall, and List Learning. Fasting plasma levels of insulin, cortisol, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, insulinlike growth factor-I, and β-amyloids 40 and 42. Results Six months of high-intensity aerobic exercise had sex-specific effects on cognition, glucose metabolism, and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and trophic activity despite comparable gains in cardiorespiratory fitness and body fat reduction. For women, aerobic exercise improved performance on multiple tests of executive function, increased glucose disposal during the metabolic clamp, and reduced fasting plasma levels of insulin, cortisol, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor. For men, aerobic exercise increased plasma levels of insulinlike growth factor I and had a favorable effect only on Trails B performance. Conclusions This study provides support, using rigorous controlled methodology, for a potent nonpharma-cologic intervention that improves executive control processes for older women at high risk of cognitive decline. Moreover, our results suggest that a sex bias in cognitive response may relate to sex-based differences in glucometabolic and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis responses to aerobic exercise.
Subfields: Behavioral Neuroscience, Critical Care and Intensive Care Medicine, Psychiatry and Mental health
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/59cc6da2b60b66b9a1c526c946b86f3ddc4b8804
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Citations in the corpus
- Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor: A Key Molecule for Memory in the Healthy and the Pathological Brain (2019, background): “In the same manner, changes in BDNF levels induced pharmacologically or by aerobic exercise are related to better cognitive function and diminished synaptic dysfunction both in humans at risk of developing AD and in animal models of AD (Baker et al., 2010; Intlekofer and Cotman, 2013).”
- A Review of the Effects of Physical Activity and Exercise on Cognitive and Brain Functions in Older Adults (2013, background): “A recent randomized clinical study evaluated the impact of a six-month aerobic exercise intervention in individuals with mild cognitive impairment [81].”
- The Influence of Exercise on Cognitive Abilities (2013, positive): “Specific to humans, circulating BDNF has been to hippocampal volume, with aerobic fitness related upregulation of BDNF serum levels and greater hippocampal volume among older adults (3,60,61,111).”
- Exercise as medicine – evidence for prescribing exercise as therapy in 26 different chronic diseases (2015, methodology): “The effect was twice as strong for women as for men (Baker et al., 2010).”