Exercise Effects on Brain Health and Learning From Minutes to Months

Study Results

Results available

Outcome measurements, participant flow, baseline characteristics, and adverse events have been published for this study.

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Basic Information

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Recruitment Status

COMPLETED

Clinical Phase

NA

Total Enrollment

122 participants

Study Classification

INTERVENTIONAL

Study Start Date

2018-05-01

Study Completion Date

2023-06-21

Brief Summary

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Given the accelerating growth of older adults worldwide and the decline in cognitive function with aging, therapeutics that remediate age-related cognitive decline are needed more than ever. The proposed research seeks to better understand and enhance the detection of exercise effects on hippocampal network function and learning and memory, which decline with aging and Alzheimer's. Success would lead to new ways to detect benefits of exercise on cognitive aging and would lead to mechanistic insight on how such plasticity is possible while also informing prevention strategies.

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Detailed Description

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Animal models robustly support that exercise protects brain areas vulnerable to aging such as the hippocampus and that these benefits lead to better learning. In contrast, there are mixed findings from human studies on the cognitive benefits of exercise with healthy older adults. This contrast indicates there is still a lack of understanding for how exercise could change the course of cognitive decline in aging adults. However, no human studies have comprehensively tested exercise effects on cognition in older adults with learning tasks inspired from basic exercise neuroscience. The objective in the proposed research is to fill this translational gap by determining if different types of exercise improve the same kinds of learning in older adults that have been shown to improve in animal models by improving hippocampal function. This will bring the investigators closer to a long-term goal of determining how exercise protects the brain from adverse effects of aging in order to develop interventions that minimize age-related cognitive decline. The overall hypothesis is that exercise improves learning when it increases functional hippocampal-cortical communication that otherwise declines with aging. The investigators will test this in a sample of healthy older adults by determining if increases in functional hippocampal-cortical connectivity from exercise training improve learning on an array of tasks that require the hippocampus for acquisition of new relational memories compared to conditions of the same tasks that should not require the hippocampus for learning and memory.

Conditions

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Sedentary Lifestyle

Study Design

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Allocation Method

RANDOMIZED

Intervention Model

PARALLEL

Primary Study Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Blinding Strategy

DOUBLE

Participants Outcome Assessors

Study Groups

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Cardiorespiratory fitness training

Cardiorespiratory fitness training will be a 24-week supervised cycling program designed to improve cardiorespiratory fitness, with supervision directly from the research team. All participants will first receive a one-on-one orientation with an exercise training specialist that has been trained by Dr. Gary Pierce in monitoring an exercise program for healthy older adults. Training will start with a 5 minute-warm-up, 20 minutes moderate intensity cycling and 30 minutes light intensity cycling, and 5 minute cool-down per session, for 3 sessions/week. In each additional week, 6 minutes of moderate intensity cycling per session will be added, until the total time for moderate intensity is 50 minutes per session by the start of week 5 (with additional 5 minute warm-up and 5 minute cool-down).

Group Type EXPERIMENTAL

Cardiorespiratory fitness training

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Physical exercise of moderate intensity designed to improve cardiorespiratory fitness

Functional fitness training

Functional fitness training will be a 24-week supervised exercise program designed to focus on functional flexibility and mobility, with supervision directly from our research team. All participants will first receive a one-on-one orientation with an exercise training specialist that has been trained by Dr. Gary Pierce in monitoring an exercise program for healthy older adults. Training will start with a 5 minute-warm-up, 20 minutes of light intensity cycling and 20 minutes of dynamic stretching to increase range of motion and functional fitness, for 3 sessions/week. In each additional week, additional stretches will be added to maintain variety and improve flexibility of all major muscle groups.

Group Type ACTIVE_COMPARATOR

Functional fitness training

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Physical exercise of light intensity designed to improve functional fitness

Interventions

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Cardiorespiratory fitness training

Physical exercise of moderate intensity designed to improve cardiorespiratory fitness

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Functional fitness training

Physical exercise of light intensity designed to improve functional fitness

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

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Inclusion Criteria

* Eligible to participate in an aerobic exercise intervention based on the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire, and corrected vision of 20/40.
* Approval from a physician that monitored electrocardiography (ECG) response during a maximal aerobic fitness test that is part of the second study visit described below.
* Exercising less than 60 minutes a week for the past calendar year

Exclusion Criteria

* Not between the ages of 55 and 80 years old
* Not fluent in English
* Score \< 20 (out of 30) on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA)
* Inability to comply with experimental instructions
* Qualify as "high risk" for acute cardiovascular event by the published standards of the American College of Sports Medicine
* Previous diagnosis of neurological, metabolic, or psychiatric condition, and no previous brain injury associated with loss of consciousness
* Inability to complete an MRI

Minimum Eligible Age

55 Years

Maximum Eligible Age

80 Years

Eligible Sex

ALL

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes