cognitive abilities Archives - Amazing Health Advances

Brain Function Boosted by Daily Physical Activity in Middle-Aged, Older Adults

AHA Publisher — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 08:00:53 +0000

University of California San Diego Health via Newswise – A new study by researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine adds to the canon of research associating physical activity with cognitive performance, this time using 90 middle-aged and older subjects who wore accelerometers while physically active and completed mobile cognitive testing from home. “The future of lifestyle interventions really needs to be remote-based,” said Raeanne Moore, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine and principal investigator of the study. “The pandemic has made this especially clear.” On the days their physical activity increased, the study found, the 50- to 74-year-old participants performed more effectively on an executive function task, and on the days when their physical activity decreased, so too did their cognitive performance. The findings published Jan. 31, 2022 in the journal JMIR mHealth and uHealth. “It was a very linear relationship,” Moore said. “We hypothesized that we would find this, but we couldn’t be sure because we weren’t telling people to increase their physical activity. They just did what they do every day.” First author Zvinka Zlatar, PhD, a clinical psychologist at UC San Diego School of Medicine, added: “Future interventions, in which we ask people to increase their physical activity, will help us determine if daily changes in physical activity lead to daily gains in cognition measured remotely or vice versa.” The correlation between physical activity and cognition remained when adjustments were made for various co-morbidities, such as HIV status, age, sex, education and race/ethnicity. But it held only for persons who function dependently — who rely on others to perform the tasks of daily living, such as managing household activities or paying the bills. “For them, physical activity may have a greater benefit on daily, real-world cognitive performance,” Moore said, a finding consistent with research into Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Though it didn’t fall within the purview of this study, Moore speculated that, because functionally independent adults likely perform more cognitively stimulating and social activities, which are known to have positive impacts on brain health, physical activity may have less of an impact on cognition. Moore and Zlatar said their work has implications for the development of novel digital health interventions to preserve brain health in aging. “We don’t know yet if there’s a cumulative, long-term effect to these small daily fluctuations in cognition,” Zlatar said. “That’s something we plan to study next – to see if performing physical activity at different intensities over time, in unsupervised settings, can produce long-term improvements in brain health and sustained behavior change.” To read the original article click here.

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Mount Sinai Researchers Uncover a Key Neural Mechanism Believed to Support Advanced Cognitive Abilities

AHA Publisher — Wed, 22 Dec 2021 08:00:13 +0000

Mount Sinai Health System via Newswise – New York, NY (Dec. 21, 2021) – Mount Sinai scientists have discovered a neural mechanism that is believed to support advanced cognitive abilities such as planning and problem-solving. It does so by distributing information from single neurons to larger populations of neurons in the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that temporarily stores and manipulates information. It is well established that humans can only hold a limited amount of information in mind at a time, and that they enlist different cognitive strategies, like organizing information into lists or groups, to overcome these constraints. The research team found that when the brain uses these strategies to organize information, neural codes in the prefrontal cortex become less dependent on the highly selective responses of single neurons. Instead, they become distributed among a larger pool of neurons, which may make the information more reliable or robust. The findings were published online in Neuron on December 20. “Our study gives the field an important new perspective on how the brain allocates its resources to improve cognitive performance,” says senior author Erin Rich, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “Findings from our study will help scientists to better understand, and in the future to potentially treat, disorders of memory and cognition.” The study was led by Feng-Kuei Chiang, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Rich’s lab who has previously studied functions of the prefrontal cortex in sequencing tasks. Traditionally, studies of neural coding—which transforms electrical impulses from the neurons into memories, knowledge, decisions, and actions—have focused on selective responses of single neurons. The Mount Sinai team demonstrated the shortcomings of such an approach by designing a task to probe changes in the prefrontal cortex that result in improved cognitive performance. The task allowed the subjects to use a mnemonic (or memory aid) strategy to order information into a sequence. “We found that subjects spontaneously generated different selection patterns, including routine sequences, to decrease the working memory demands of the task,” said Dr. Chiang. Researchers were surprised to find that interpretable responses of single neurons were a poor predictor of memory performance when subjects used the sequencing strategy to organize information held in the mind. Using the strategy reduced error rates in the task, but the activity of single neurons appeared to convey less information. They were able to reconcile these findings by showing that the information was not lost, but more widely distributed among a larger population of neurons. The task-relevant information could be recovered as well or better than when the codes were dominated by a smaller number of highly tuned neurons, and the distributed codes appeared to be more reliable, since they improved behavioral performance. “This is a brand-new discovery in the nature of prefrontal codes, and it could point to a key neural mechanism that supports advanced cognitive abilities like planning, strategizing, and problem-solving that depend on real-time organization of information,” explains Dr. Rich. “By shifting the focus from selective responses of single neurons, we’ve shown that the collective activity of neural populations needs to be considered when developing new strategies to improve cognitive performance or treat cognitive disorders.” To read the original article click here.

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Excessive Body Fat Can Increase the Risk of Dementia

AHA Publisher — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 07:00:04 +0000

University of South Australia via News-Medical – It’s the global epidemic that affects two in every five adults, but as obesity continues to expand waistlines worldwide, researchers at the University of South Australia are warning that harmful body fat can also increase the risk of dementia and stroke. Examining grey brain matter of about 28,000 people, the world first research showed that increased body fat incrementally leads to increased atrophy of grey matter in the brain and consequently higher risk of declining brain health. Grey matter is an essential part of the brain responsible for execution control, muscular and sensory activity as well as learning, attention, and memory. Obesity is a major issue worldwide, with numbers nearly tripling since 1975. Data from the World Health Organization shows that more than 1.9 billion adults are overweight, with 650 million being obese. More than 340 million children (aged 5-19) are overweight or obese, with 39 million children under the age of five also falling into this category. Lead researcher, UniSA’s Dr Anwar Mulugeta, says the findings add to the growing issues associated with being overweight or obese. “Obesity is a genetically complex condition characterized by the excessive body fat.” Dr Anwar Mulugeta, Lead Researcher, UniSA “Generally, the three obesity subtypes have a characteristic of higher body mass index, yet, each type varies in terms of body fat and visceral fat distribution, with a different risk of cardiometabolic diseases. “We found that people with higher levels of obesity especially those with metabolically unfavorable and neutral adiposity subtypes had much lower levels of grey brain matter, indicating that these people may have compromised brain function which needed further investigation. “However, we did not find conclusive evidence to link a specific obesity subtype with dementia or stroke. Instead, our study suggests the possible role of inflammation and metabolic abnormalities and how they can contribute to obesity and grey matter volume reduction.” The study used Mendelian randomization to examine the genetic data of up to 336,000 individual records in the UK Biobank, with self-reported information and linked hospital and death register records to connect dementia and stoke. It found that middle to elderly age groups (37-73) grey brain matter decreased by 0.3 per cent for every extra 1 kg/m2, which is equivalent of an extra 3 kg of weight for person of average height individuals, (173 cm) Senior investigator, Professor Elina Hyppönen, Director of UniSA’s Australian Centre for Precision Health based at SAHMRI, says maintaining a healthy weight is important for general public health. “It is increasingly appreciated that obesity is a complex condition, and that especially excess fat which is located around the internal organs have particularly harmful effects on health,” Professor Hyppönen says. “Here, we used the individuals’ genetic and metabolic profiles to confirm different types of obesity. In practice, our findings very much support the need to look at the type of obesity when assessing the type of likely health impact. “Even in a relatively normal weight individual, excess weight around the abdominal area may be a cause of concern.” “Commonly linked to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and chronic inflammation (a marker of dementia), obesity currently costs Australia’s economy about $8.6 billion dollars each year. “While the disease burden of obesity has increased over the past five decades, the complex nature of the disease means that not all obese individuals are metabolically unhealthy, which makes it difficult to pinpoint who is at risk of associated diseases, and who is not. “Certainly, being overweight generally increases your risk for cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and low-grade inflammation, but understanding the level of risk is important to better direct supports. “In this study, we investigated the causal relationships of individuals within three metabolically different obesity types – unfavorable, neutral and favorable – to establish whether specific weight groups were more at risk than others.

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