A new research led by University of Pittsburgh psychologists shows that older adults may be able to prevent declines (衰退) in a certain kind of memory by sticking to regular exercise.
From the study, exercising about three times a week for at least four months is how much people need to obtain the benefits in episodic memory. Episodic memory, which is supported by a part of the brain that's known to benefit from exercise, is the kind that deals with events that happened to you in the past. It's also one of the first to decline with age.
Exercise that gets the heart pumping has shown promise in increasing brain health, and experiments in mice show that it improves memory — but studies looking at the same link in humans have come out mixed.
During the research, the team read 1,279 studies carefully, eventually narrowing them down to just 36 that met specific criteria (标准). Then they used specialized software and no small number of Excel spreadsheets to transform the data into a form where the different studies could be directly compared. That work paid off when they found that pooling together those 36 studies was enough to show that for older adults, exercise can indeed benefit their memory.
Past analyses looking at connections between exercise and memory didn't find one, but the team took several extra steps to give them the best chance of finding a link if one did exist. They limited their search to particular groups and age ranges as well as a specific kind of strict experimental setup. Another key was focusing specifically on episodic memory.
With that much larger pool of participants, the team was able to show a link between exercise and episodic memory. The team also found the greatest effects of exercise in those who hadn't yet experienced any cognitive (认知的) decline.
