Childhood exercise may maintain and promote cognitive function in later years: Study

international the study The group revealed changes in the neural network and cortical structure of the brain that underlie the positive link between exercise in childhood and maintenance and promotion of cognitive function in later years.

Results published in the journal NeuroImage explain that people who are physically active in childhood have higher cognitive function in later life.

Participants who exercised as a child performed well on cognitive tests, regardless of their current age. However, no such relationship was found between task performance and post-children exercise-suggesting that childhood exercise is particularly important for brain development and long-term cognitive health. I will.

Researchers have shown that people who are physically active in childhood (up to the age of 12) have higher cognitive function in later life. However, they could not find a correlation between cognitive function and post-childhood physical activity. Positive associations between childhood motor and cognitive function include modular (* 1) separation of brain networks, enhanced connectivity between cerebral hemispheres, increased cortical thickness, and dendrite levels of dendrites. It was obvious by the decrease in the density and the decrease in the density. As a child, the formation of brain networks is susceptible to environmental and experience-related factors. Exercise during this period is thought to optimize the development of the brain network and help maintain and promote cognitive function in later years. Studies over the last decade have shown that childhood exercise affects cognitive development.

Recent findings show that these benefits of childhood exercise extend to the maintenance and promotion of cognitive function after middle age. However, changes in brain function and structure associated with this positive association have not yet been revealed.

In this research study, MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) was used to reveal the structural and functional changes in the brain behind this relationship, with physical activity in childhood and cognitive function in later years. I investigated the relationship.

The research group enrolled 214 participants between the ages of 26 and 69 to investigate the relationship between motor and cognitive function in childhood and the underlying functional and structural neural networks and cortical structure. We conducted a survey. Children’s exercise was evaluated via a questionnaire.

Response suppression (the ability to suppress inappropriate behavior), one aspect of cognitive function, was measured using the Go / No-go task. Image data from MRI was analyzed to calculate structural and functional connectivity (* 2), cortical thickness, myelination, neurite orientation dispersion, and density index.

Through the Human Connectome Project (* 3), we divided the brain into 360 regions and acquired the functional and structural parameters of each region. In the statistical analysis, the information obtained from the questionnaire was used as a confounding factor. This included each participant’s educational background, parents’ educational background, number of siblings, and adult exercise.

First, the researchers analyzed the relationship between whether participants exercised during childhood and the performance of Go / No-go tasks (false positive rate).

They found that participants who exercised in childhood (up to 12 years of age) had a lower false positive rate than those who did not exercise (Figure 1). Moreover, this correlation was seen regardless of the age of the participants. However, no such relationship was found between task performance and exercise after the child.

Next, the research group investigated the structural and functional connectivity of the brain related to the performance of pass / fail tasks in participants who exercised in childhood.

From these results, they found a positive and negative association between childhood exercise and false positive rate (Figure 2A: connection shown in red) with respect to structural connectivity of the brain (Figure 2A: Confirmed that there is a connection (shown in blue) in the Go / No-go task. Large network connections were found in more than half (73%) of the structurally connected area. These areas were positively correlated with the false alarm rate for Go / No-go tasks (Figure 2B, left).

On the other hand, connectivity between the cerebral hemispheres was found in most (88%) of the structurally connected areas that were negatively associated with the false alarm rate of the task (Figure 2B, right part). For connections between functional areas, connections showing a positive association with false alarm rates for Go / No-go tasks (Figure 3A: connections shown in red) were identified in participants who exercised in childhood. However, no negative association was found.

In addition, large network connections were found in most of the contiguous zone (91%) that was positively associated with the task false alarm rate (Figure 3B, left part).

Participants who did not exercise in childhood had no structural or functional connections identified in relation to the false alarm rate for Go / No-go tasks. Finally, the researchers investigated cortical structural parameters related to the pass / fail alarm rate of participants who exercised as children.

They found that task performance was negatively associated with cortical density and positively associated with neurite orientation dispersion and degree of density.

The above results show that modular isolation and enhanced interhemispheric connections in the brain network of people exercising in childhood reduced the number of mistakes made in Go / No-go tasks. .. (ANI)

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