Alzheimer's, Dementia & Mental Health
Exercise Increases Size of Brain Structure, Improves
Spatial Memory in Senior Citizens
The hippocampus shrinks with age, causing small but
significant cognitive declines that differ among seniors
Feb.
25, 2009 – Size matters when it comes to the hippocampus, a brain
structure vital to certain types of memory. Unfortunately for senior
citizens, this part of the brain - like many other parts of the body –
shrinks with aging. Now researchers have found that elderly adults who
are more physically fit tend to have bigger hippocampi and better
spatial memory than those who are less fit.
The
study, in the journal Hippocampus, shows that hippocampus size in
physically fit adults accounts for about 40 percent of their advantage
in spatial memory. (More about hippocampus below news report.)
The hippocampus, a curved structure deep inside the
medial temporal lobe of the brain, is essential to memory formation.
Remove it – as was done in the well-known case of surgical patient Henry
Gustav Molaison – and a person's ability to store most new experiences
in memory is destroyed. (Read more about Molaison in box below news
report.)
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The hippocampus also is a key player in spatial
navigation and other types of relational memory. (More about spatial
memory below news report.)
Certain activities are believed to modify
hippocampus size in humans. For example, a study of London taxi drivers
found that the posterior portion of the hippocampus was larger in
experienced taxi drivers than in other subjects.
And a study of German medical students found that
the same region of the hippocampus increased in size as they studied for
their final exams.
Studies also have found that the hippocampus
shrinks with age, a process that coincides with small but significant
cognitive declines. The rate at which this occurs, however, differs
among individuals.
Earlier studies found that exercise increases
hippocampus size and spatial memory in rodents, but the new study is the
first to demonstrate that exercise can affect hippocampus size and
memory in humans.
The researchers, from the University of Illinois
and the University of Pittsburgh, measured the cardiorespiratory fitness
of 165 adults (109 of them female) between 59 and 81 years of age.
Using magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers
conducted a volumetric analysis of the subjects' left and right
hippocampi. They also tested the participants' spatial reasoning.
They found a significant association between an
individual's fitness and his or her performance on certain spatial
memory tests. There was also a strong correlation between fitness and
hippocampus size.
"The higher fit people have a bigger hippocampus,
and the people that have more tissue in the hippocampus have a better
spatial memory," said U. of I. psychology professor Art Kramer, who led
the study with Pittsburgh psychology professor Kirk Erickson.
"Even ignoring the hippocampus data, we see there
is this significant and substantial relationship between how fit you are
and how good your memory is, or at least a certain kind of memory, a
certain kind of memory that we need all the time," Kramer said.
"This is really a clinically significant finding
because it supports the notion that your lifestyle choices and behaviors
may influence brain shrinkage in old age," Erickson said. "Basically, if
you stay fit, you retain key regions of your brain involved in learning
and memory."
An impairment of spatial memory "is one of a number
of reasons why older people end up losing their independence," Kramer
said. "Here is yet more evidence that becoming fit has implications for
how well you're going to live your life."
Kramer is a full-time faculty member of the Beckman
Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at Illinois.
About Spatial Memory
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In cognitive psychology and neuroscience, spatial
memory is the part of memory responsible for recording information about
one's environment and its spatial orientation. For example, a person's
spatial memory is required in order to navigate around a familiar city,
just as a rat's spatial memory is needed to learn the location of food
at the end of a maze. It is often argued that a person's, or an
animal's, spatial memories are summarised in a cognitive map.
Spatial memories are formed after an organism
gathers and processes sensory information about its surroundings
(especially vision and proprioception). In general, mammals require a
functioning hippocampus (particularly area CA1) in order to form and
process memories about space. There is some evidence that human spatial
memory is strongly tied to the right hemisphere of the brain.
>>
Read more at Wikipedia
About Hippocampus
The
hippocampus is a brain structure located inside the medial temporal lobe
of the cerebral cortex, and therefore is part of the telencephalon
(forebrain). It belongs to the limbic system and plays major roles in
short term memory and spatial navigation. Humans and other mammals have
two hippocampi, one in each side of the brain. In rodents, where it has
been studied most extensively, the hippocampus is shaped something like
a banana. In humans it has a curved and convoluted shape that reminded
early anatomists of a seahorse. The name, in fact, derives from the
Greek word for seahorse (Greek: ιππος, hippos = horse, καμπος, kampos =
sea monster).
In Alzheimer's disease the hippocampus is one of
the first regions of the brain to suffer damage; memory problems and
disorientation appear among the first symptoms. Damage to the
hippocampus can also result from oxygen starvation (anoxia),
encephalitis, or medial temporal lobe epilepsy. People with extensive
hippocampal damage may experience amnesia, that is, inability to form or
retain new memories.
>>
Read more at Wikipedia
About Henry Gustav Molaison
In 1953, he underwent an experimental brain
operation in Hartford to correct a
seizure disorder, only to emerge from it fundamentally and
irreparably changed. He developed a syndrome neurologists call profound
amnesia. He had lost the ability to form new memories.
For the next 55 years, each time he met a friend,
each time he ate a meal, each time he walked in the woods, it was as if
for the first time.
And for those five decades, he was recognized as
the most important patient in the history of brain science. As a
participant in hundreds of studies, he helped scientists understand the
biology of learning,
memory and physical dexterity, as well as the fragile nature of
human identity.
>>
Read more in the New York Times
