Exercise Effects on Brain Health and Learning From Minutes to Months
Exercise Effects on Brain Health and Learning From Minutes to Months
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.
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.
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