Improving aerobic capacity in healthy older adults does not necessarily lead to improved cognitive performance.

Abstract

The effects of aerobic exercise training in a sample of 85 older adults were investigated. Ss were assigned randomly to either an aerobic exercise group, a nonaerobic exercise (yoga) group, or a waiting-list control group. Following 16 weeks of the group-specific protocol, all of the older Ss received 16 weeks of aerobic exercise training. The older adults demonstrated a significant increase in aerobic capacity (cardiorespiratory fitness). Performance on reaction-time tests of attention and memory retrieval was slower for the older adults than for a comparison group of 24 young adults, and there was no improvement in the older adults' performance on these tests as a function of aerobic exercise training. Results suggest that exercise-related changes in older adults' cognitive performance are due either to extended periods of training or to cohort differences between physically active and sedentary individuals.Several parameters of cardiovascular functioning (e.g., maximal heart rate, cardiac output, and left ventricular ejection fraction during exercise) typically exhibit a decline during later adulthood, even in the absence of overt coronary disease (Brandfonbrener, Landowne, & Shock, 1955;Gerstenblith, Lakatta, & Weisfeldt, 1976;Port, Cobb, Coleman, & Jones, 1980;Strandell, 1976). There is, in addition, a significant agerelated decline in cardiorespiratory fitness (i.e., aerobic capacity), the ability to sustain maximal expenditures of energy. This decline in aerobic capacity is particularly pronounced for performances in which the maximal power output closely approximates the power available, as when, for example, maximal performance relies on the involvement of large muscle systems (Stones & Kozma, 1985).Many aspects of cognitive performance also undergo an agerelated decline; this is especially true of tasks that are attentiondemanding or provide minimal environmental support for memory encoding and retrieval processes (Burke & Light, 1981;Craik&Byrd, 1982;Hasher &Zacks, 1989). Even in the presence of adequate retrieval support (e.g., memory tasks that measure performance by means of recognition rather than reThis research was supported by Grants AG04238 and AG02163 from the National Institute on Aging and by Grant HL30675 from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.We are grateful to Fred Cobb, Martin Sullivan, and Michael Higginbotham for ergometry testing, and to Janet Simon, Robin Pomeroy, Julia Whitaker, Cheri Rich, Sally Schnitz, Carol Cracciolo, Janet Ivey, Audrey Norman, Marti Wilson, and Tina Caldwell for technical assistance.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to David J. Madden, Box 2980, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina 27710. call), age differences are evident in the speed of performance, and a generalized age-related slowing in the speed of information processing can account for age differences across a wide variety of cognitive tasks (Salthouse, 1985a(Salthouse, , 1985b.Evidence from several cross-sectional studies has suggested that aerobic...

Impact of Physical Exercise on Reactive Time and Cognitive Function in Mentally Deficient Adolescents

“…But, results of physical training are more ambiguous. Our results are in contrast with those of Madden et al [40] that examined the effect of 4 months of an aerobic programme on cognitive performance in aged adults. However, despite a significant increase in the aerobic capacity, no effect of the aerobic training was noted for any of the cognitive tasks examined in the study.…”

Healthy Brain Aging: Role of Exercise and Physical Activity

“…The beneficial effects of physical exercise on the cognitive performances of nondemented participants have also been reported in several RCTs, [46][47][48][49][50] although others found no cognitive improvement in physically active groups. 41,[51][52][53] Most of these RCTs were based on small samples of young-old participants, and were short-term trials, none of which were designed to assess incidence of AD or dementia as the main outcome.…”

“…47,55,57,[59][60][61][62][63][64] One explanation may be that most exercise programs last a few months, whereas physical activity may protect cognitive function in the long-term.…”

Healthy mind in healthy body? A review of sensorimotor–cognitive interdependencies in old age

“…Generally, aerobic fitness intervention studies are conducted with cognitively healthy older adults who do not engage in regular physical activity before the intervention [41,42,61,66]. These individuals are then assigned randomly to an exercise or a control group.…”