Physical exercise protects brain health in the elderly

An international research team has shed light on the biological processes that mediate the beneficial effect of physical exercise on cognitive skills and mental health. As published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia, the team found that exercise increases the levels of certain proteins known to strengthen communication between brain cells across synapses, which may be a key factor in keeping dementia at bay.

In order to promote healthy brain ageing in old age, various lifestyle changes are usually recommended, such as adopting a more balanced diet, boosting routine cognitive activities and devoting more time to physical exercise. This recommendation is based on epidemiological observations that maintain that physical activity is associated with a lower incidence of Alzheimer’s and other dementias, and it is estimated that sedentary lifestyles may account for more than four million cases of dementia every year.

“Several clinical trials in which moderate physical exercise was included as therapy have shown a positive effect on both cognition and cortical thickness,” noted study co-author Alfredo Ramos-Miguel, a researcher at the University of the Basque Country. Furthermore, preclinical studies in animal models have suggested that physical exercise may enhance cognitive skills by increasing synaptogenesis, ie, the generation of new neural connections. But according to Ramos-Miguel, “The difficulty in performing molecular studies in the human brain limits the possibilities of finding the biological mechanisms that mediate the beneficial effects of physical exercise on mental and cognitive health during ageing.”

To establish the anatomical-pathological and molecular bases of cognitive and psychomotor decline, the Memory and Aging Project (MAP) at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center has been leading a longitudinal study since 1997 with volunteers who agree to undergo periodic cognitive and psychomotor assessments and to donate their organs for scientific purposes after death. This makes it possible to correlate daily habits and health states directly with structural and functional alterations in the brains of the participants.

The latest publication of that project presents results for 404 individuals whose physical activity was monitored with wristwatch or wristband-based actimeters for an average of 3.5 years ante-mortem. After death, samples were collected from up to 12 brain areas essential for cognitive and psychomotor skills; quantitative and functional analyses of eight synaptic proteins were performed on these samples, and a comprehensive histopathological evaluation, which examines 10 neuropathologies associated with ageing, was made.

The results confirmed that higher rates of daily physical activity are associated across the board with an enrichment in the quantity and functionality of all the synaptic proteins analysed. This association was most pronounced in brain regions related to motor control, such as the caudate nucleus and putamen. Furthermore, the relationship between physical exercise and synaptic density was independent of both the neuropathological load found in the same brain areas and the presence of pathologies affecting motor skills, indicating that physical activity can be beneficial for any elderly person regardless of their health status. Actigraphy data also indicated that the beneficial effects of physical exercise are highly volatile, as those participants with a high physical routine during early life and who discontinued this habit in the last two years of life had synaptic densities similar to those observed in more sedentary participants.

“This study shows, for the first time in humans, that physical exercise, even at an advanced age, contributes either towards promoting synaptogenesis processes or towards increasing synaptic resilience against the deleterious effects of neuropathological lesions,” Ramos-Miguel said.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Mladen

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