The recent study reveals that previously disconnected portions of the brain, especially within the memory center, begin to interact in increasingly complex ways after regular and habitual exercise. This suggests that incorporating activity into your daily or weekly routine may improve your memory, especially if you’re older.
Many studies performed with both animals and humans have established that exercise improves brain health. This includes a wide array of mental abilities, from critical thinking skills to memory retention.
For example, in one 2016 study, researchers found a correlation between collegiate running and sharp thinking. In MRI scans of the runners’ brains, the areas of the brain responsible for attention, decision making, and working memory were synchronized. In sedentary students, these parts of the brain did not communicate in sync in the same way.
This suggests that people who exercise more often form connections between disparate parts of the brain and ultimately improve their thinking skills.
Although this 2016 study proves that exercise impacts brain health, both groups of students were young and healthy.
One researcher, Mark Gluck, hoped to learn more about how exercise can improve memory in aging brains. After all, over 6.2 million people suffer from memory-related illness and 3.1 billion dollars a year is invested into Alzheimer’s and dementia research in the US alone. Could a simpler solution—or preventative care—be right under our noses the whole time?
As a professor of neuroscience at Rutgers University and director of the Aging & Brain Health Alliance, Dr. Mark Gluck led an exercise experiment in collaboration with his colleagues at the university as well as local churches, community centers, and community members.
The focus of the study was the hippocampus—the memory center’s core, which is often the source of issues in aging brains that struggle with learning and memory.
Most of the volunteers for Dr. Gluck’s study were in their 60s, and all of the participants in the study were older African-American people living near Newark, New Jersey. The volunteers came to Dr. Gluck’s lab for regular check-ups regarding their physical and cognitive health. Some, but not all, of the participants agreed to brain scans.
At the beginning of the study, all of the participants had similar sedentary lifestyles and memory function. Then, the volunteers were split into two groups, depending on their preference. Some worked out twice a week at an hour-long aerobics class for 20 weeks, while others opted to be in the control group and not alter their lifestyle.
After 20 weeks, 34 of the volunteers who had initially consented to have their brains scanned came back for another one. 17 had begun the workout routine, while the other 17 had not.
Like the runners in the 2016 study, the active participants in Dr. Gluck’s study show synchronized brain activity. Compared to the inactive group, the group that exercised had more dynamic, flexible, and synced brain activity. Their brains could rearrange neural connections in ways that the sedentary group could not.
While comparisons of the brain scans prove that exercise impacts brain health, the cognitive test results may be more compelling. The participants who exercised in the past 20 weeks saw improved memory retention, learning ability, and logical thinking in new scenarios. And those who had more new interconnections on the brain scans saw the best performance.
Dr. Gluck’s study shows that exercising a few times a week can improve neural flexibility and result in better memory function. It was published in January in the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory.
