Physical Activity and Cardiorespiratory Fitness Are Beneficial for White Matter in Low-Fit Older Adults

Agnieszka Zofia Burzynska, Laura Chaddock-Heyman, Michelle W. Voss, Chelsea N. Wong, Neha P. Gothe, Erin A. Olson, Anya Knecht, Andrew Lewis, Jim M. Monti, Gillian E. Cooke, Thomas R. Wojcicki, Jason Fanning, Hyondo David Chung, Elisabeth Awick, Edward McAuley, and Arthur F. Kramer

PLoS One. 2014; 9(9): e107413.

Our lab studies effects of sedentary vs physical activity on the brain and have shown an active lifestyle to be overall beneficial to cardiovascular health. I found this paper exciting because it looks at not only how an active lifestyle and good cardiovascular health can have positive effects on white matter later in life but also the neural correlates for these relationships. Using 88 healthy low-fit adults they examined the relationship between cardiorespiratoy fitness (CRF) with three different levels of physical activity (PA) and how it affected the levels of white matter (WM). Adults used for this study were between the ages of 60-79 years old, had no history of stroke or neurological illness, and had similar scores thresholds many other test. Participants PA was monitored for a week with a accelerometer worn on the hip and measurements collected placed them in one of the three levels of PA: sedentary behavior, light PA, and moderate to vigorous PA (MV-PA). T2 weighted MRI images were used to examine the integrity of WM and presence of white matter hyperintensities (WMH); lesions that appear in WM during old age that damage WM integrity. Age-related degeneration of WM micro-structures can be captured as decreased fractional anisotropy (FA) measured with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). The study concluded that higher levels of MV-PA were linked to lower WMH volume, PA and CRF are related but not equivalent in their relationships with WM health in aging, and PA is associated with WM health in aging in an intensity- and region-specific manner. 

It’s interesting to look at the additional effects an active lifestyle can have on the body past the cardiovascular level. This paper shows it’s never too late to start doing any level of PA and that its has many of its benefits are still unknown to us. 

Zachery