With the increase in life expectancy and declining birth rates, the issue of improving the quality of life in people over 60 has become one of the priorities in health care (WHO, 2015). So  far a limited number of studies have addressed the long-term relationship between aerobic exercise and cognitive processes (e.g. see systematic review by Young, Angevaren, Rusted, & Tabet, 2015). The aim of the study was to conduct the first stage in developing an instrument to retrospectively investigate life-time physical activity. Methods: a literature search in databases EBSCO, Pubmed, SCOPUS and Science Direct using keywords “retrospective physical activity”, “long-term physical activity” was conducted.  After literature review, individual interviews with participants aged from 65 to 76 were held to create a retrospective physical activity questionnaire. Interviews were conducted according to literature-based protocol, which was updated after each participant. Results: eight main categories of life-time activity: "work”, “education", "sleep", "transportation", "self-care", "leisure time", "household activities" and "sports”.  Conclusions: means of measuring life-long physical activity retrospectively would be highly beneficial in physical activity research; however, further work in developing and validating retrospective physical activity questionnaire is needed.

Background. Ageing of the Western Society has become both – economic and social concern. Ageing has both – biological and psychological consequences, and, with changes in the brain due to ageing (e.g. decline in the brain volume in frontal, parietal and temporal areas, as well as hippocampus (Colcombe et al., 2003; Erickson, Voss, Shaurya, Basak, & Szabo, 2011)), there are changes in cognitive functioning. For the past years, research has indicated a relationship between aerobic activity interventions and increase in episodic memory (Ruscheweyh et al., 2011), face recognition associative memory (Hayes et al., 2015) and working memory (Erickson et al., 2011). Methods. The aim of the study was to examine the relationship between involvement in aerobic physical activities and memory; thus 43 seniors aged from 65 to 85 (M = 71.86, SD = 5.09, 23% male) were included in the study. Based on their physical activity experience, participants were divided into three groups – seniors with long- term aerobic physical activity experience (n = 16), seniors that have recently taken up aerobic physical activities (n = 19) and seniors not involved in physical activities (n = 8). Results. The preliminary data indicated relationship between long-term involvement in physical activities and working memory, as well as negative relationship between sedentary lifestyle and overall cognitive abilities. Conclusions. As this is still a work in progress, one of the limitations being the small sample, these results can be considered only as a tendency. Another limitation is the unequal gender distribution. This study was funded by the Latvian National Research Programme BIOMEDICINE 2014–2017.

In the next 30 years, a significant increase of the population aged over 65 is expected (WHO, 2015). Ageing can often be associated with cognitive decline; however, recent research indicates that symptoms of age-related cognitive impairment are modulated by Cognitive Reserve (CR), which derives from level of education, working activity, and social activity (Tucker & Stern, 2011). The role of CR in neurodegenerative disease has been extensively researched, but little is known about its contribution to normal ageing. Fifty-four healthy Latvian seniors were recruited for the study. We assessed simple and complex reaction times, associative memory, memory retrieval, attention, working memory. Furthermore, we quantified their CR. We analysed the relationship between CR and reaction times with two separate logistic regressions. Then, four linear regression models were built to analyse the relationship between CR and the scores on the cognitive tasks. CR was not related to the cognitive performance of healthy Latvian seniors. Such results indicate that CR resources may be mostly required when high-demanding tasks have to be performed.

Abstract. The aging of the Western society has become one of the key issues in research. Lately research has shown relationship between improvement in cognitive functioning and involvement in physical activities. The aim of the study was to examine the impact of different types of physical activities on executive functioning. Overall 30 seniors aged from 65 participated in a two-day study. They were divided into three groups per their life-style -aerobic activity, strength training and sedentary. Results indicated differences between the groups in cognitive efficiency (F = 6.791, p < 0.01) and working memory (F = 6.179, p < 0.01) as well as the inhibition of attention (F = 4.311, p < 0.01). The mean scores were higher in the aerobic group. The results indicate that involvement in aerobic physical activity might lessen the decline in executive functioning in seniors.

Regular physical activity helps to improve physical and mental functions as well as reverse some effects of chronic disease to keep older people mobile and independent (McPhee et al., 2016). However, physical activity with aerobic load elements could be a contributing factor to aging (Prakash, Voss, Erickson, & Kramer, 2015). Epidemiological studies have shown that the intensity of daily physical activity might have an important role to maintain life-long cognition (Kimura, Yasunaga, & Wang, 2013). The aim is to identify differences Latvian time use from the retrospective surveying primary data from Total Life-span Physical Activity questionnaire and tertiary data from 1979 published data on population time use and trends (Eglite, Svikis, & Zarina, 1979). Methods: The primary data of daily activities was from April to December 2019 obtained from the retrospective questionnaire “Total Lifespan Physical Activity questionnaire” (Ulmane, Šneidere, & Stepens, 2019) and tertiary data were used from 1979 published data on population time use and trends (Eglite, Svikis, & Zarina, 1979). The data were adjusted to six physical activity categories to be comparable - Work/education, physiological needs, Transportation, Leisure time, Household activities and Sports. Results: did not affect males and females differently in these measures, but only differences of some categories. Results show that the most differences were found in the categories – transportation, household activities, and sport. Conclusions: The study had several limitations because data from the 1979 published book (Eglite, Svikis, & Zarina, 1979) was only available in aggregate form. Together these results provide important insights into the difference between the capital city, small towns or rural areas, but 2019 study respondents were almost always from the capital city. However, in the future for more precise data analysis needed primary or secondary data.