Department of Psychology, University of Almería, Spain.
Department of Psychology, University of Almería, Spain.
Exp Gerontol. 2019 Mar;117:53-60. doi: 10.1016/j.exger.2018.10.019. Epub 2018 Oct 24.
Aerobic exercise is associated with changes in brain morphology and improvement of cognitive functions. Physical activity may be especially important after age 60 when cognitive decline is more pronounced. In this paper, the effect of chronic practice of aerobic sports was studied in old adults by assessing their executive and mnesic functions, supported by frontal and temporal brain structures. Two groups were formed according to their age (60-69 and 70-79 years-old) including sportsmen (n = 23) and sedentary men (n = 24). Spatial memory and efficiency of attentional networks were measured, as well as general intelligence. Results showed that sportsmen outperformed sedentary participants in many of the tests employed. Thus their alerting, orienting and executive networks worked more effectively in the ANT-I task for executive functions, and they were more accurate in the spatial memory task, displaying a better spatial orientation. Scores in other neuropsychological tasks followed the same tendency. These data support the protective effect of aerobic exercise on cognitive functions.
有氧运动与大脑形态的变化和认知功能的改善有关。当认知能力下降在 60 岁以后变得更加明显时，身体活动可能尤为重要。在本文中，通过评估老年人的执行和记忆功能，研究了慢性有氧运动对老年人的影响，这些功能由额叶和颞叶脑结构支持。根据年龄（60-69 岁和 70-79 岁）将两组老年人分为运动员（n=23）和久坐不动的人（n=24）。测量了空间记忆和注意力网络的效率，以及一般智力。结果表明，运动员在多项测试中表现优于久坐不动的参与者。因此，他们的警觉、定向和执行网络在执行功能的 ANT-I 任务中更有效，在空间记忆任务中更准确，表现出更好的空间定向。其他神经心理学任务的分数也呈现出相同的趋势。这些数据支持有氧运动对认知功能的保护作用。
