Abstract
Brain health is essential to successful aging, and exercise is essential to brain health. Evidence supports the benefits of regular physical and cognitive exercise in preventing or delaying progressin of mild cognitive impairment and dementia. Despite known benefits, motivation to initiate and adhere to an exercise program can be challenging to older adults. We propose that assessment of motivation in the older adult population be part of individualized physical and cognitive exercise program initial development and ongoing precision health coaching to facilitate initiation of—and adherence to—individualized multi-modal exercise programs and sustained exercise engagement. We suggest one published, physical exercise motivation questionnaire and present a new, psychometrically supported, parallel cognitive exercise questionnaire to do so. Needs for—and implications of—continued exercise motivation research using neurophysiologic and neuropsychologic metrics are discussed.
Highlights
Much evidence supports the health benefits of daily physical activity and exercise for all
Knowing that motivation is key to successful exercise engagement, we hypothesize that neurophysiologic and neuropsychologic metrics of motivation will offer reliable predictors of adherence and will enable the design of personalized exercise programs for older adults, with and without MCI or dementia, that will maximize the benefits of their physical and their cognitive exercise success
We have presented a new, psychometrically supported, cognitive exercise motivation questionnaire that we adapted from a psychometrically supported physical exercise motivation questionnaire, the Behavioural Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire-3 (BREQ-3)
Summary
Much evidence supports the health benefits of daily physical activity and exercise for all. On their Physical Activity website, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that “regular physical activity is one of the most important things you can do for your health” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021) and links physical activity and exercise to lowered risk for a number of medical diagnoses, including cardiovascular disease, hip fractures, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers (https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/pa-health/index.htm). Research strongly supports that physical inactivity is a primary causal factor of premature mortality and numerous chronic diseases and conditions, including depression, dementia, and other loss of functional capacities with chronological aging (Booth et al, 2012; Piercy et al, 2018; Powell et al, 2018; Warburton and Bredin, 2017). While acknowledging 1) the broad health benefits of physical activity and exercise, 2) the consequences of reduced or absent physical activity and exercise, and 3) the importance of motivation to adherence to these, the primary focus of this paper on motivation and adherence to exercise is on older adults and their neurologic status
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