summary: Combining cognitively demanding tasks with walking improves brain performance in older adults.
sauce: University of Rochester
In search of the proverbial Fountain of Youth, scientists have long sought evidence of the super-aged, whose brains age more slowly than their bodies.
Researchers at the University of Rochester’s Del Monte Neuroscience Institute have found that combining cognitive tasks with walking improves brain performance in older adults.
“Identifying the super-old will leverage what we know about the brain and aging,” said Eleni Patelaki, Ph.D. in biomedical engineering.A student at the University of Rochester Medical Center and lead author of the paper published today neuro image.
“But this is difficult to do because in this case there is no external evidence of this ability and people are unaware that their brains are functioning differently.”
Walking or doing something reveals brain flexibility
Researchers had participants complete the same cognitive task while sitting and walking. Her 37 men and women, aged 62 to her 79, had similar scores when sitting. When the same group repeated the test while walking, researchers found that some individuals improved their cognitive performance. Researchers observed these changes using Mobile Brain/Body Imaging (MoBI) to measure how the brain responded to dual tasks.
‘We believe that this brain activity may constitute a sign of ‘super-aging,’ said Pateraki. “We were able to find seven. Now that we know how and where to look in the brain to find these super-old people, we can find more.”
Participants who improved their cognition while walking showed that their brains were able to adapt and improve on the task. The brain used specific frontal resources flexibly. However, those people, like their peers who did not improve on the task while walking, lost flexibility in using their remaining neural resources. brain adaptive capacity or flexibility may be an important factor in preserving cognition as we age.
Also improves the brains of some young adults
Previously, the same group of researchers at the Frederick J. and Marion A. Schindler Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory found that altering neural resource use also improved performance on cognitive tasks while walking in some young, healthy individuals. discovered.
As with older adults, there were no predictors of who improved and who did not before taking the test. It was a clue. Most previous studies have shown that the more tasks a person has to do at the same time, the worse their performance, especially in older people.
Creating a brain health map
Brain flexibility is an indicator of brain health. This study provides a potentially necessary element for tracking brain health in individuals.
“These findings have promise for application to clinical populations such as patients with neurodegenerative diseases,” said Ed Freedman, Ph.D., associate professor of neuroscience and senior author of the study. “These markers will be used to assess disease progression, assess treatment outcomes, and potentially preclinically identify people at increased risk of developing age-related or disease-related cognitive decline. can do.”
Other authors include Dr. John Fox, Emma Mantell, and George Cassis from the Del Monte Neuroscience Institute at the University of Rochester. This study was supported by the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience Pilot Program and recordings were made at the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (UR-IDDDRC) at the University of Rochester.
About this Aging, Cognitive and Exercise Research News
author: press office
sauce: University of Rochester
contact: Press Office – University of Rochester
image: image is public domain
Original research: open access.
“Paradoxical improvements in cognitive control in older adults under dual-task walking conditions are associated with more flexible redistribution of neural resources: A Mobile Brain-Body Imaging (MoBI) studyEleni Pateraki and others neuro image
overview
Paradoxical improvements in cognitive control in older adults under dual-task walking conditions are associated with more flexible redistribution of neural resources: A Mobile Brain-Body Imaging (MoBI) study
Combining locomotion with demanding cognitive tasks has traditionally been expected to reduce locomotion and/or cognitive task performance. However, in a cohort of young adults, we recently showed that the addition of walking to performance on a Go/NoGo response inhibition task improved the performance of most participants.
The present study aims to extend these previous findings to an older cohort and investigate whether this improvement is observed when performing dual tasks in healthy older adults.
Electroencephalogram (EEG) activity while sitting or walking on a treadmill, three-dimensional (3D) ambulation in 34 young adults and 37 adolescents using Mobile Brain/Body Imaging (MoBI) We recorded kinematics and behavioral responses in a Go/NoGo task. senior citizen.
We found that improved response accuracy during walking correlated with slower response to stimuli, regardless of age (r = 0.44) and gait-related EEG amplitude modulation in the midfrontal region (r = 0.47) during the sensory gating (N1) and conflict monitoring (N2) stages of inhibition, and in the left lateralized prefrontal cortex (r = 0.47) Inhibition control implementation phase (P3). These neural activity changes were associated with a cognitive component of inhibition and interpreted as a sign of behavioral improvement during walking.
On the other hand, aging was found to be correlated with decreased treadmill walking speed independently of response accuracy during walking (r = -0.68) and the attenuation of the EEG amplitude modulation associated with locomotion was found in the left-dominant frontal lobe (r = -0.44) and the parieto-occipital region (r = 0.48) during the N2 stage and centroparietal area (r = 0.48) during the P3 stage. These neural activity changes were associated with the motor component of inhibition and were interpreted as signs of aging.
Elderly individuals with ‘paradoxically’ improved response accuracy during walking exhibit neural signatures of both behavioral improvement and aging, and flexibility in redistributing neural resources during walking may have implications for cognitive function. This suggests that it may be maintained but not with the motor inhibitory component.
These distinct neural signatures of aging and behavior could potentially be used to identify ‘very old people’, i.e. individuals at risk of cognitive decline due to aging and neurodegenerative diseases.
