Exercise has been shown to improve brain health and reduce the risk of cognitive decline and dementia in the long term. But daily physical activity has immediate benefits for brain health, according to a new study from researchers at Penn State College of Medicine.
The team found that middle-aged people who participated in daily exercise showed an improvement in cognitive processing speed equivalent to that of being four years younger, regardless of whether the activity was of lower intensity, such as walking the dog or doing household chores, or a higher intensity, such as jogging. .
The findings were published in the journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine.
You don’t have to go to the gym to experience all the potential benefits of physical activity. All movement is important. Daily exercise is considered a source of accumulated physical activity that can be attributed to a healthy lifestyle and can have a direct impact on cognitive health.”
Jonathan Hakun, assistant professor of neurology and psychology at Penn State and the Penn State College of Medicine
Previous research on the relationship between physical activity and cognitive health has typically looked at the long-term relationship, such as over decades for a retrospective study or months to a year for intervention studies. Hakun said he was interested in connecting the dots more quickly to understand the potential short-term impact of physical activity on cognitive health.
The research team used smartphone technology to interact with participants multiple times during their normal daily lives, using a protocol called ecological momentary assessment. For nine days, participants checked in six times a day, approximately every 3.5 hours.
During each check-in, participants reported whether they had been physically active since their last check-in. If they were active, they were asked to rate the intensity of their activity -; light, moderate or strong. For example, walking and cleaning were considered light intensity, while running, fast cycling, and strenuous walking were considered vigorous intensity. Participants were then asked to play two “brain games,” one designed to assess cognitive processing speed and the other designed to assess working memory, which Hakun says can be a proxy for executive function.
The team analyzed data from 204 participants recruited for the Multicultural Healthy Diet Study to Reduce Cognitive Decline & Alzheimer’s Risk. Data were collected during the baseline period of the study. Participants were between 40 and 65 years old and residents of the Bronx, NY who had no history of cognitive impairment. Half of the participants were black or African American and 34% were Hispanic.
The team found that when participants reported being physically active sometime in the previous 3.5 hours, they showed improvements in processing speed equivalent to being four years younger. Although no improvements in working memory were observed, response time during the working memory task reflected the improvements observed for processing speed.
“We get slower as we age, both physically and cognitively. The idea here is that we can temporarily counteract that through exercise. It’s compelling,” Hakun said. “There is an opportunity for a short walk or a little extra exercise to give you a boost.”
Furthermore, people who reported being active more often experienced greater short-term benefits than those who reported less physical activity overall. Hakun said this suggests that cognitive health benefits may increase with regular physical activity. However, he explained that more research is needed to understand how much physical activity and the frequency and timing of being active affect cognitive health.
Hakun says future research could include linking the ecological momentary assessment with activity monitoring tools to better track the association between observed physical activity, behavior and cognitive outcomes. He also hopes to collect data over a longer period of time to see how daily physical activity affects cognitive health over time compared to normal aging.
Other Penn State authors on the paper include Daniel Elbich, data scientist; and Tian Qiu, doctoral student in epidemiology and public health sciences; and Martin Sliwinski, professor of human development and family studies. Other authors include Lizbeth Benson, research assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research; Mindy Katz, senior associate in the department of neurology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine; Pamela Shaw, senior investigator in biostatistics, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute; and Yasmin Mossavar-Rahmani, professor of epidemiology and public health, Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Funding from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health supported this work.
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Magazine reference:
Hakun, J.G. et al. (2024). Cognitive health benefits of daily physical activity in a diverse sample of middle-aged adults. Annals of Behavioral Medicine. doi.org/10.1093/abm/kaae059.