Melbourne, Nov 14 (PTI) Aerobic exercise can improvememory function and maintain brain health as we age, a newstudy has found.
Researchers from the Western Sydney University inAustralia examined the effects of aerobic exercise on a regionof the brain called the hippocampus, which is critical formemory and other brain functions.
Brain health decreases with age, with the average brainshrinking by about five per cent per decade after the age of40.
The researchers systematically reviewed 14 clinicaltrials which examined the brain scans of 737 people before andafter aerobic exercise programs or in control conditions.
The participants, aged between 24 and 76 years, includeda mix of healthy adults, people with mild cognitive impairmentsuch as Alzheimer's and people with a clinical diagnosis ofmental illness including depression and schizophrenia.
The researchers examined effects of aerobic exercise,including stationary cycling, walking, and treadmill running.
The length of the interventions ranged from three to 24 monthswith a range of two to five sessions per week.
The results, published in the journal NeuroImage, showedthat while exercise had no effect on total hippocampal volume,it did significantly increase the size of the left region ofthe hippocampus in humans.
"When you exercise you produce a chemical called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which may help to preventage-related decline by reducing the deterioration of thebrain," said Joseph Firth, from the National Institute ofComplementary Medicine (NICM) at Western Sydney University.
"Our data showed that, rather than actually increasingthe size of the hippocampus per se, the main 'brain benefits'are due to aerobic exercise slowing down the deterioration inbrain size," he said.
"In other words, exercise can be seen as a maintenanceprogramme for the brain," he added. PTI SNE SARSNE.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.