Abstract
Cognitive abilities decline over the time course of our life, a process, which may be mediated by brain atrophy and enhanced inflammatory processes. Lifestyle factors, such as regular physical activities have been shown to counteract those noxious processes and are assumed to delay or possibly even prevent pathological states, such as dementing disorders. Whereas the impact of lifestyle and immunological factors and their interactions on cognitive aging have been frequently studied, their effects on neural parameters as brain activation and functional connectivity are less well studied. Therefore, we investigated 32 healthy elderly individuals (60.4 ± 5.0 SD; range 52–71 years) with low or high level of self-reported aerobic physical activity at the time of testing. A higher compared to a lower level in aerobic physical activity was associated with an increased encoding related functional connectivity in an episodic memory network comprising mPFC, thalamus, hippocampus precuneus, and insula. Moreover, encoding related functional connectivity of this network was associated with decreased systemic inflammation, as measured by systemic levels of interleukin 6.
Highlights
It is a well-known phenomenon that our neurocognitive abilities change with age but there are remarkable differences in the timing and trajectory of these changes (Hedden and Gabrieli, 2004; Hofer and Alwin, 2008)
With respect to the fMRI memory task, we found a significant difference in performance between the aerobic (+/−) groups
We found that the aerobic (+) group revealed stronger BOLD activation in the left hippocampus and a stronger functional connectivity between medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and left thalamus/right hippocampus during memory encoding
Summary
It is a well-known phenomenon that our neurocognitive abilities change with age but there are remarkable differences in the timing and trajectory of these changes (Hedden and Gabrieli, 2004; Hofer and Alwin, 2008). Investigating the effects of lifestyle factors may be highly informative for the development of interventions to reduce or delay age-related cognitive decline. Among these lifestyle factors physical exercise both enhances and preserves cognitive function in the elderly (Dustman et al, 1984; Colcombe and Kramer, 2003; Smith et al, 2010; Bherer et al, 2013). Even patients already suffering from mild cognitive impairment or dementing disorders improve in cognitive functioning after a physical exercise intervention (Heyn et al, 2004; Lautenschlager et al, 2008). Physical exercise is a promising low-cost treatment to improve neurocognitive function that is accessible to most elderly
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