Physical Activity and the Aging Brain

Effects of Exercise on Neurological Function

Ronald Ross Watson, Ronald Ross Watson

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780128052624
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Geriatrics

Physical Activity and the Aging Brain: Effects of Exercise on Neurological Function is a complete guide to the manifold effects of exercise and physical activity on the aging brain. Cognitive decline and motor impairment, onset of diseases and disorders, and even changes in family structure and social settings that occur as we age can all impact activity levels, yet continued physical activity is crucial for successful neurological functioning.

This book examines the role that exercise and physical activity play in halting or modulating the deleterious effects of these numerous aging concerns by first examining the current state of research into how exercise manifests physical changes in the brain. It then discuss how physical activity combines with other lifestyle factors to benefit the aging brain, including nutrition, computerized brain training, and social engagement. Most significantly, it also covers how physical activity can serve as therapy to help alleviate the symptoms of various neurological diseases impacting aging populations, with particular emphasis on Alzheimer's disease and age-related cognitive decline.

The book provides broad coverage of the effects of exercise and physical activity on the aging brain, its therapeutic effects, and the many factors that influence the aging process.

• Presents research scientists with a complete understanding of the role of exercise in healthy brain aging
• Considers the roles of nutrition, the mind-body connection, and other lifestyle factors
• Presents a major resource for exercise and physical activity in the neurological health of older adults
• Provides a synopsis of key ideas associated with the many aspects of physical activity, along with lifestyle factors that can modify neurological diseases and age-related neurological decline

Part I

Overview of Exercise and Neurological Changes

Outline

Chapter 1. Effects of Physical Activity on the Cerebral Networks

Chapter 2. Exercise and the Developing Brain in Children and Adolescents

Chapter 3. Differential Expression of the Brain Proteome in Physical Training

Chapter 4. Physical Exercise-Induced Changes in Brain Temperature

Chapter 1

Effects of Physical Activity on the Cerebral Networks

A. Begega, P. Alvarez-Suarez, P. Sampedro-Piquero, and M. Cuesta Institute of Neuroscience, Asturias, Spain

Abstract

It is well documented that ageing is accompanied by a decline in cognitive functions such as, memory, attention, and speed of information processing. Different nonpharmacological approaches have been proposed for the purpose of promoting health, such as, mental training, mediterranean diet, and physical exercise. This is because their benefits on both cognitive and cerebral function have been proven. Numerous studies have targeted the design of intervention programmes favoring these neuroplasticity processes such as exercise programmes. This intervention type have been shown, both in humans and rodents studies, to have benefits on neuroplasticity, neurogenesis, and levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, among others. Hence, any physical activity must be accomplished in order to maintain them as long as possible.

Keywords

Ageing; Cerebral networks; Cognitive function; Exercise; Neuroplasticity

What Is Cognitive Ageing?

In the past few decades, research in ageing and ageing-related cognitive changes have experimented a great breakthrough. It is well documented that ageing is accompanied by a decline in cognitive functions such as, memory, attention, and speed of information processing (Salthouse, 2012, 2000; Swain et al., 2012). Speed of information processing is defined as “the amount of information that can be processed per time unit or the speed at which a series of cognitive operations can be done”. This difficulty reduces as how fast we process the information from the environment and affects other processes like short-term memory and information interference, which favors a higher distractibility in elderly people. Elders’ attentional capacity is reduced and is accompanied by more distractibility and proactive interference.

In this case, proactive interference refers to the process by which we are not able to reduce the influence of previous-learned information so we can successfully perform the new-information required task (Bartko et al., 2010). Namely, besides difficulties in memory processes (Bamidis et al., 2014), executive functions were also affected in the elderly people. In light to this situation, it seems obvious that life quality is diminished as independence is compromised in everyday-activities (Vance et al., 2012), leading to emotional impairments which have been related to ageing, such as major depression and anxiety. This is a discouraging scenario for elderly population, but in recent years the field of Neuroscience has developed numerous ageing-related studies in order to know how to intervene and achieve the maintenance of these basic cognitive functions or, at least, delay their deterioration. Thus, different nonpharmacological approaches have been proposed for the purpose of promoting health, such as, mental training, mediterranean diet, and physical exercise. This is because their benefits on both cognitive and cerebral function have been proven (Ballesteros et al., 2015).

Regarding to this research, cognitive reserve acquires a special relevance and has been studied by Yaakov Stern’s research team, among others. They define cognitive reserve as the ability to make flexible and efficient use of available brain reserve when performing tasks (Stern, 2002). Cognitive reserve has been related to lifestyle and how different circumstances, activities, and habits can positively influence independence and life quality during the ageing process. It has been most often estimated using education and IQ, although other variables have also been used including literacy, occupational complexity, participation in leisure activities, as well as the cohesion of social networks. Cognitive reserve can also be related to neurobiological mechanisms like neural compensation and neuronal reserve (Barulli and Stern, 2013), which refer to a subject’s ability to use cognitive processes and, therefore, neuronal networks in an effective way, leading to a lower impact of ageing-related functional changes. Neural compensation by Stern (2002) is defined as the use of alternative neuronal networks due to an incapability to use the task-related impaired one, which is a common mechanism in the ageing process. On the other hand, neural reserve is associated with the functional use of the task-related neuronal network, which produces an increase in its activity, or to a functional support of secondary-related networks, which favors task efficacy. As both the processes seem to occur frequently during ageing, cognitive reserve continues to be influenced by circumstances throughout the lifespan. The cognitive reserve could subserve a delay in cognitive deterioration and in age-related dementia. Among the activities, aerobic exercise is seem to have a beneficial effects on cognitive reserve (Ballesteros et al., 2015).

Physical Exercise and Health

Exercise is commonly known by its wide benefits on health, especially in the muscle strengthening and the prevention of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). However, it positively affects many different aspects of the organism physiology, both in healthy individuals and those at risk of developing a disease or aggravating it. For example, it seems to increase the probability of normal delivery among healthy pregnant women, which means less caesarean cases (Domenjoz et al., 2014). As a matter of fact, exercised mothers and their children have shorter hospital stays, less complications, shorter labor, and less preterm labor than nonexercisers (May, 2012).

Ageing is characterized by a progressive reduction of the regeneration potential, determined by both genetic and environmental factors that lead to an imbalance between repair and accumulation of cellular damage. The decline of cellular function is accompanied by ageing-related, harmless phenotypes like grey hair and wrinkles (Ludlow et al., 2013), also by a loss of physiological integrity and higher vulnerability to death, the main cause for most of the major pathological human diseases such as Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, diabetes, certain kinds of cancer, and CVD (López-Otín et al., 2013). Here, we number the benefits of exercise in some main human pathologies.

Several studies have demonstrated associations between active behaviors and age-related health outcomes. For example, it has been documented an inverse relationship between physical activity and all-cause mortality, just the same as a direct relationship between low-cardiorespiratory fitness and disease. On the basis of this, exercise has been included in most of the guidelines for prevention or reduction of CVD mortality, advising at least 30 min of moderate-intensity aerobic activity 5 days per week to gain even years in life expectancy (Schuler et al., 2013). Together with an appropriate diet, this simple recommendations are in order to reduce low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and blood pressure (Wenger, 2014).

It has been demonstrated that exercise stimulates mitochondria biogenesis in the skeletal muscle through oxidative stress, leading to a deceleration of age-related diseases caused by a loss of mitochondria or an impairment in their function, like sarcopenia, cancer, or neurodegenerative diseases (Sun et al., 2015). Physical exercise can be used as a therapy in many different muscle-affected disorders. It can potentially prevent muscle atrophy caused by muscle inflammation, physical inactivity, and systemic glucocorticoid treatments in patients with idiopathic inflammatory myositis (Munters et al., 2014). Moreover, it has been proposed to counteract many of ...