Middle-Aged Adults Who Cycle or Stretch Improve Memory
By Kathleen Doheny
WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD
April 6, 2012 -- Your brain isn't a muscle, but as you age
exercise can improve your memory and other thinking skills, a new study shows.
And the exercise doesn't have to be as rigorous as a marathon, the research suggests.
In
the new study, middle-aged men and women who cycled or did a stretching
and coordination routine for two hours weekly for six months had
improvements in memory and other thinking skills.
Combining the
two may provide even better results, says researcher Kirsten Hotting,
PhD, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Hamburg, Germany. "I
would guess that combining different forms of exercise might enhance
their beneficial effects," she tells WebMD.
The study is published in
Health Psychology.
Exercise and Memory: Research Details
In late adulthood, experts say, a region of the brain involved in memory, the hippocampus, shrinks.
Previous
research has found that this region had grown a year after older adults
began to exercise. That growth was accompanied by improved memory.
For
the new study, Hotting wanted to focus on middle-aged adults. She
evaluated 68 inactive men and women ages 40 to 56. She assigned them to
the stretching program or the
cycling program.
She added a group of 18 non-active people as a comparison group.
Before the study, everyone got a heart
fitness test. Each of the programs were supervised and lasted one hour, twice a week, Hotting says.
"The
stretching/coordination training started with a short warm-up phase,
followed by stretching and strengthening of the major muscles of the
whole body," she says. "Coordination exercises were balance exercises,
complex movements of arms and legs, and so on. The training ended with
some relaxation exercises."
The cyclists were told to exercise at
their target heart rate (as determined by the fitness test) for about 45
minutes, Hotting says. They ended with a cool-down.
Before and after the study, Hotting's team measured memory and other thinking skills.
Exercise and Memory: Results
The
cycling group improved their heart fitness by 15%. The stretching and
inactive groups did not have noticeable changes in their fitness.
But
both the cycling and the stretching groups did better on the memory
test of learning a list of items than the inactive group.
The increase in this test score was linked with an increase in fitness.
The cycling group improved more than the others in the recognition test. It tests long-term retention of learned material.
One
surprise finding: The stretching group actually improved more in a test
of attention than did the cycling group. In a paper and pencil test,
they had to find and mark certain letters quickly.
Hotting didn't find any noticeable differences in performance for any other thinking skills.
The
improvements in memory are useful, she tells WebMD. "In everyday life,
learning a list of items is relevant when learning vocabulary, a
shopping list, or remembering to-do lists."
The recognition test
reflects an ability to remember learned items for more than a few
minutes, she says. "That is relevant for many things you want to
remember in everyday life."
Exercise and Memory: Improved Blood Flow
The
study findings echo previous research, says Scott Small, MD, the
Herbert Irving professor of neurology at Columbia University. He
reviewed the findings but was not involved in the German study.
Other studies have also found that an increase in fitness is linked with selective improvements in memory, he tells WebMD.
In
his own research, Small has found that inactive people who become
physically active can increase blood flow to the brain. They then score
better on memory tests.
One strength of the new study, he tells
WebMD, is the length of the training. Another is the focus on
middle-aged men and women. He says they often worry about memory
problems.
SOURCES: Hotting, K. Health Psychology,
March 2012. Kirsten Hotting, PhD, lecturer in psychology, University of
Hamburg, Germany. Scott Small, MD, Herbert Irving professor of
neurology, Columbia University, New York. Pereira, A. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, March 27, 2007.
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