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Exercise
can boost brain function
By
Koren Capozza Many
people know the toll high-fat foods and a sedentary lifestyle take on health,
but few are aware these bad habits also affect memory and ability to learn. One
study by Japanese researchers found joggers out-performed non-joggers on a
series of learning and memory tests. All of the tasks required the use of the
prefrontal cortex, the brain area located behind the forehead and used to
perform complex functions. The
researchers compared seven young healthy joggers with seven similar non-joggers.
After a regimen of running 30 minutes a day for 12 weeks, the joggers excelled
at memorization exercises and multi-tasking. "The
tests showed that joggers had a clear improvement in prefrontal function over
non-joggers," said lead author Dr. Kisou Kubota of Nihon Fukushi University
in Japan. "These improvements, however, went down when the joggers stopped
their training, which suggests that ongoing exercise is required to maintain the
benefit." The
Japanese team plans to use brain imaging to get a better understanding of what
happens in the prefrontal cortex after exercise. Scientists
from the University of California, Los Angeles believe a protein called
brain-derived neurotrophic factor is responsible for exercise's benefit on brain
function. Led by
Dr. Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, the researchers examined the levels of BDNF in the
hippocampus of rats and found the smarter rats had higher levels of the protein.
They also discovered exercise increased the rats' ability to perform memory and
learning tasks by boosting the levels of BDNF in the brain. "The
results open the possibility that exercise has a more fundamental role in neural
function than previously believed," said Dr. Gomez-Pinilla. Fast
food eaters should take heed from Pinilla's finding that a high-fat, high
sucrose diet causes a decline in BDNF and a similar decline in brain function.
But, for those who cannot give up french fries or sodas, healthy brain function
can be maintained if they also exercise. "This
suggests that exercise can be used as a compensatory strategy to ameliorate the
effects of an unhealthy diet on cognition and neural function," Pinilla
said. Dr.
David Albeck of the University of Colorado in Boulder said the findings have
important clinical implications. "The
groups which might benefit most from regular voluntary exercise are depressed
people, those with mood disorders and old people," he said. Kubota
plans to further explore the therapeutic benefit of exercise in a larger study
on young and old subjects. "We
also may be able to find a way to use exercise...to help aged people and those
with Alzheimer's disease who tend to perform worse on some complex prefrontal
learning and memory tasks," said Dr. Kubota. |