Abstract
The demographic change in industrial countries, with increasingly sedentary lifestyles, has a negative impact on mental health. Normal and pathological aging leads to cognitive deficits. This development poses major challenges on national health systems. Therefore, it is necessary to develop efficient cognitive enhancement strategies. The combination of regular physical exercise with cognitive stimulation seems especially suited to increase an individual’s cognitive reserve, i.e., his/her resistance to degenerative processes of the brain. Here, we outline insufficiently explored fields in exercise-cognition research and provide a classification approach for different motor-cognitive training regimens. We suggest to classify motor-cognitive training in two categories, (I) sequential motor-cognitive training (the motor and cognitive training are conducted time separated) and (II) simultaneous motor-cognitive training (motor and cognitive training are conducted sequentially). In addition, simultaneous motor-cognitive training may be distinguished based on the specific characteristics of the cognitive task. If successfully solving the cognitive task is not a relevant prerequisite to complete the motor-cognitive task, we would consider this type of training as (IIa) motor-cognitive training with additional cognitive task. In contrast, in ecologically more valid (IIb) motor cognitive training with incorporated cognitive task, the cognitive tasks are a relevant prerequisite to solve the motor-cognitive task. We speculate that incorporating cognitive tasks into motor tasks, rather than separate training of mental and physical functions, is the most promising approach to efficiently enhance cognitive reserve. Further research investigating the influence of motor(-cognitive) exercises with different quantitative and qualitative characteristics on cognitive performance is urgently needed.
Highlights
A crucial aspect of human living is motion
Dementia has a negative impact on the cognitive performance of an individual and reduces the autonomy as well as the quality of life (Andersen et al, 2004; Scherder et al, 2011; Fiest et al, 2016)
Dementia is a major contributor to health care costs (Hurd et al, 2013; Wimo et al, 2013), and it is expected that the number of those affected by dementia will almost double every 20 years (Prince et al, 2013)
Summary
A crucial aspect of human living is motion. While the control of movements requires cognitive processes, moving probably influences cognition and its underlying processes (structures), too (Hamacher et al, 2015c). Dementia has a negative impact on the cognitive performance of an individual and reduces the autonomy as well as the quality of life (Andersen et al, 2004; Scherder et al, 2011; Fiest et al, 2016). Physical inactivity and sedentary behavior are associated with reduced cognitive functions (Falck et al, 2016; Ku et al, 2017) and increased welfare costs (Janssen, 2012; Peeters et al, 2014), too. The proportion of individuals with poorer cognitive capacities will increase in the years, which makes it necessary to develop effective cognitive enhancement strategies (Colzato, 2016) that serve to enhance the cognitive reserve [defined as individual differences in how people process tasks; detailed description of term and concept could be found in Stern (2002, 2009)] and the resilience against neurodegeneration (Nithianantharajah and Hannan, 2009; Stern, 2012, 2013)
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