Physically Fit Older Adults Have More White Matter Integrity

Physically active older adults have better white matter tract integrity, a new research states.

The study was conducted on 88 adults aged between 60 and 78 who were healthy but 'low-fit.' Researchers told the participants to wear accelerometers every time they walked for one week.

The research team then took two types of images of their brains. The first image was about the structural integrity of a tissue through diffusion tensor imaging and the second one examined changes in white matter, called lesions that were related to aging.

Researchers noted that nearly 95 percent of the participants aged 65 and older had white matter lesions, which are common in aging people. However, the team found differences in the abundance of lesions between physically active older adults and those who were not. Participants who exercised moderately-to-vigorously had fewer lesions.

Those who were into light exercises had greater structural integrity in the white-matter tracts located at the temporal lobes, a region associated with memory, language, and visual and auditory information processing.

Older people who had sedentary lifestyle had lower structural integrity in the white matter tracts tied to the hippocampus, which is the region of the brain linked to learning and memory.

"To our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind that uses an objective measure of physical activity along with multiple measures of brain structure," University of Illinois postdoctoral researcher Agnieszka Burzynska, who conducted the research with U. of I. Beckman Institute director Arthur Kramer and kinesiology and community health professor Edward McAuley said in a press release.

"This relationship between the integrity of tracts connecting the hippocampus and sedentariness is significant even when we control for age, gender and aerobic fitness. It suggests that the physiological effect of sitting too much, even if you still exercise at the end of the day for half an hour, will have a detrimental effect on your brain," Burzynska said. "We hope that this will encourage people to take better care of their brains by being more active."

The study was published in the journal, PLOS ONE.