Brain function associated with higher cardiorespiratory
fitness plays a role in increased cognitive performance in older adults,
according to a new study at the University of Illinois.
(September 11, 2015) The
aging process is associated with declines in brain function, including memory
and how fast our brain processes information, yet previous research has found
that higher levels of cardiorespiratory fitness in older adults leads to better
executive function in the brain, which helps with reasoning and problem
solving. Higher cardiorespiratory fitness levels have also been found to
increase brain volume in key brain regions.
A new study from a team at the Beckman Institute for
Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois reveals the
connection between brain activation, cardiorespiratory fitness, and executive
function in older adults, finding that dual-task processing in a core executive
function brain region is associated with higher cardiorespiratory fitness and
dual-task performance.
“Previous studies have shown that there’s a relationship
between cardiorespiratory fitness and behavioral performance in older adults.
Other studies have looked at cardiorespiratory fitness and brain function, but
really linking all three of those hasn’t been quite been done as explicitly as
we did in this paper,” said Chelsea Wong, a M.D./Ph.D. student at the
University of Illinois and first author on the paper, published in Frontiers in
Aging Neuroscience.