Practice of Aerobic Sports is Associated with Better Spatial Memory in Adults and Older Men

Abstract

Background/Study Context: Cognitive abilities experience diverse age-related changes. Memory complaints are common in aging. The practice of sports is known to benefit brain functioning, improving memory among other abilities. Introduction of virtual reality tasks makes it possible to easily assess cognitive functions such as spatial memory, a hippocampus-dependent cognitive ability.Methods: In this study, the authors applied a virtual reality–based task to study spatial reference memory in two groups of men, sportsmen (n = 28) and sedentary (n = 28), across three different age groups: 50–59, 60–69, and 70–77 years.Results: The data showed that sportsmen outperformed sedentary participants. In addition, there was also a significant effect of the factor age. Hence, older men (70–77 years old) displayed a poorer performance in comparison with the other age groups.Conclusions: These results support the beneficial effect of habitual physical activity in spatial memory.