Physical Fitness
Improves The Brain

When it comes to the hippocampus, a brain structure vital to certain types of memory, size matters. Numerous studies have shown that bigger is usually better. Now researchers have found that elderly adults who are more physically fit tend to have bigger hippocampi and better spatial memory than those who are less fit.
The study, in the journal Hippocampus, shows that hippocampus size in physically fit adults accounts for about 40 percent of their advantage in spatial memory. The hippocampus, a curved structure deep inside the medial temporal lobe of the brain, is essential to memory formation.
The researchers, from the University of Illinois and the University of Pittsburgh, measured the cardiorespiratory fitness of 165 adults (109 of them female) between 59 and 81 years of age. Using magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers conducted a volumetric analysis of the subjects’ left and right hippocampi. They also tested the participants’ spatial reasoning.
They found a significant association between an individual’s fitness and his or her performance on certain spatial memory tests. There was also a strong correlation between fitness and hippocampus size.
“This is really a clinically significant finding because it supports the notion that your lifestyle choices and behaviors may influence brain shrinkage in old age,” Erickson said. “Basically, if you stay fit, you retain key regions of your brain involved in learning and memory.”
An impairment of spatial memory “is one of a number of reasons why older people end up losing their independence,” Kramer said. Kramer is a full-time faculty member of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at Illinois.
- Source: Sciencedaily.com. Adapted from materials provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign