Mood, physical working capacity and cognitive performance in the elderly as related to physical activity. Psychological and cognitive effects of an exercise program for community-residing older adults. Improvement of cognitive function by mental and/or individualized aerobic training in healthy elderly subjects. Cardiovascular and behavioral effects of aerobic exercise training in healthy older men and women. Effect of aerobic exercise on tracking performance in elderly people: a pilot study. Effect of aerobic and resistance training on fractionated reaction time and speed of movement. Reaction time unchanged in older women following aerobic training. Psychological and cognitive outcomes of a randomized trial of exercise among patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Improving aerobic capacity in healthy older adults does not necessarily lead to improved cognitive performance.
The age-related decline in physical working capacity, cognitive performance, and psychological well-being can presumably be modified by regular physical exercise. The present study comprises 20 men and 20 women with a mean age of 66 years. Half of the participants were randomly assigned to an exercise group, the remaining half to a control group. The members of the exercise group exercised individually through regular walking (three times a week) during a period of three months. The control group performed instead a series of mental tasks with the same regularity. Results showed significant differences in favor of the exercise group on complex tasks at the post-test, whereas only minor differences were found on simple tasks. Mood improvements were uniform, regardless of exercise involvement. The latter can be taken to indicate that exercise is not the most important factor, instead social context and regular contacts with other people may be equally important for elderly individuals. This study examined the effects of a 12-week aerobic exercise program on psychological well-being and cognitive functioning in a group of ethnically diverse older adults living in an urban community. Forty-eight older men and women (mean age = 72 +/- 6) were randomly assigned to one of three groups: an aerobic exercise training group, a social activity control group, or a waiting list group. Results indicated little change in psychological well-being and provided limited support for the association of physiological improvement with enhanced mastery and cognitive functioning. The aim of this study was to compare the effects of aerobic and mental training on cognitive function and to determine if the association of the two techniques shows better results. Thirty-two healthy elderly subjects (60 - 76 years) were assigned to one of four groups: aerobic training, mental training, combined aerobic and mental training and a control group. All subjects took two cognitive tests and an incremental exercise test before and after the training period. The intensity of exercise was individualized at the heart rate corresponding to the ventilatory threshold of each subject. After two months, the control group showed no alteration in physiological and cognitive variables. After the training period, the results showed a significant improvement in VO(2)max (F = 4.45, DF = 1, p < 0.05) of 12 % and 11 % in aerobic training and combined aerobic and mental training groups, respectively. Logical memory (F = 4.31, DF = 1, p < 0.05), as well as paired associates learning scores (F = 5.47, DF = 1, p < 0.05) and memory quotient (F = 6.52, DF = 1, p < 0.01) were significantly improved in the three trained groups. The mean difference in memory quotient between pre and post training was significantly higher in the combined aerobic and mental training group compared to aerobic training or mental training groups (F = 11.60, DF = 3, p < 0.001). We conclude that the specific aerobic training and mental training used in this study could induce the same degree of improvement in cognitive function and that combined training seemed to lead to greater effects than either technique alone. The cardiovascular and behavioral adaptations associated with a 4-month program of aerobic exercise training were examined in 101 older men and women (mean age = 67 years). Subjects were randomly assigned to an Aerobic Exercise group, a Yoga and Flexibility control group, or a Waiting List control group. Prior to and following the 4-month program, subjects underwent comprehensive physiological and psychological evaluations. Physiological measures included measurement of blood pressure, lipids, bone density, and cardiorespiratory fitness including direct measurements of peak oxygen consumption (VO2) and anaerobic threshold. Psychological measures included measures of mood, psychiatric symptoms, and neuropsychological functioning. This study demonstrated that 4 months of aerobic exercise training produced an overall 11.6% improvement in peak VO2 and a 13% increase in anaerobic threshold. In contrast, the Yoga and Waiting List control groups experienced no change in cardiorespiratory fitness. Other favorable physiological changes observed among aerobic exercise participants included lower cholesterol levels, diastolic blood pressure levels, and for subjects at risk for bone fracture, a trend toward an increase in bone mineral content. Although few significant psychological changes could be attributed to aerobic exercise training, participants in the two active treatment groups perceived themselves as improving on a number of psychological and behavioral dimensions. Although much is known about the benefits of aerobic exercise on cardiovascular health, little research has been done on the effect of aerobic exercise on motor performance. This study examined whether aerobic exercise has an effect on visuospatial information processing during finger-movement tracking in elderly subjects.
                Fifteen elderly subjects (mean age=83.2 years, SD=5.7, range=72-91) from a senior housing complex were randomly assigned to a control group or an experimental (exercise) group. Twelve subjects completed the study, and data obtained for 10 subjects were used for data analysis (2 control subjects were eliminated to allow for matched-pairs analysis between the experimental and control groups). The control group (n=5) had a mean age of 80.2 years (SD=7.8). Subjects in the experimental group (n=5) had a mean age of 84.8 years (SD=2.5).
                The intervention consisted of group exercise 3 times a week for 8 consecutive weeks, and included calisthenics (eg, marching in place, side stepping, mock boxing), stationary bicycling, and walking. A finger-movement tracking test and submaximal graded exercise tolerance step tests were performed before and after training to determine changes in finger-movement tracking and any aerobic training effects.
                Matched-pairs t tests showed a difference in tracking from pretest to posttest in the experimental group compared with the control group. Step test performance did not differ between the 2 groups.
                The results of this small-scale study with a limited number of subjects indicate that, for elderly people, finger-movement tracking performance can improve with aerobic exercise, despite the absence of an aerobic training effect. Possible mechanisms for the treatment effect on information processing are discussed. To evaluate the effect of aerobic and variable resistance exercise training on fractionated reaction time (RT) and speed of movement (SM) in elderly individuals, premotor time (PMT), motor time (MT), total RT, and SM were measured in 49 healthy, untrained men and women, 70 to 79 years of age, before and after 6 months of training. Subjects were randomized into either a walk/jog (n = 17), a strength training (n = 20), or a control group (n = 12). Improvements in aerobic capacity were only weakly related to reduced total RT (r = 0.30, p less than .05). Analysis of covariance revealed that there were no differences (p greater than .05) among the three groups after training with respect to PMT, MT, total RT, and SM. These findings indicate that 6 months of aerobic and strength training did not induce significant changes in RT or SM in this group. The effect of aerobic exercise on reaction time in older women was investigated. 14 women (M age = 65 yr.) were carefully screened for health status and lifestyle, then assigned to a random order of the exercise and control groups (ns = 7). Pre- and posttraining tests of aerobic capacity, simple reaction time, and choice reaction time were administered. The exercise group rode a stationary bicycle ergometer for 8 consecutive weeks for 3 35- to 40-min. sessions per week. There were no significant pretraining differences between groups on simple reaction time, choice reaction time, or estimated VO2max. No posttraining differences for simple and choice reaction time were found even though the exercise group had a significantly higher VO2max than the controls. Contrary to some other findings, the data indicate that reaction time may be independent of aerobic training in healthy older women. Exercise rehabilitation is recommended increasingly for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This study examined the effect of exercise and education on 79 older adults (M age = 66.6 +/- 6.5 years; 53% female) with COPD, randomly assigned to 10 weeks of (a) exercise, education, and stress management (EXESM; n = 29); (b) education and stress management (ESM; n = 25); or (c) waiting list (WL; n = 25). EXESM included 37 sessions of exercise, 16 educational lectures, and 10 weekly stress management classes. ESM included only the 16 lectures and 10 stress management classes. Before and after the intervention, assessments were conducted of physiological functioning (pulmonary function, exercise endurance), psychological well-being (depression, anxiety, quality of life), and cognitive functioning (attention, motor speed, mental efficiency, verbal processing). Repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance indicated that EXESM participants experienced changes not observed among ESM and WL participants, including improved endurance, reduced anxiety, and improved cognitive performance (verbal fluency). The effects of aerobic exercise training in a sample of 85 older adults were investigated. Ss were assigned randomly to either an aerobic exercise group, a nonaerobic exercise (yoga) group, or a waiting-list control group. Following 16 weeks of the group-specific protocol, all of the older Ss received 16 weeks of aerobic exercise training. The older adults demonstrated a significant increase in aerobic capacity (cardiorespiratory fitness). Performance on reaction-time tests of attention and memory retrieval was slower for the older adults than for a comparison group of 24 young adults, and there was no improvement in the older adults' performance on these tests as a function of aerobic exercise training. Results suggest that exercise-related changes in older adults' cognitive performance are due either to extended periods of training or to cohort differences between physically active and sedentary individuals.
There is evidence that aerobic physical activities which improve cardiorespiratory fitness are beneficial for cognitive function in healthy older adults, with effects observed for motor function, cognitive speed, auditory and visual attention. However, the majority of comparisons yielded no significant results.
The data are insufficient to show that the improvements in cognitive function which can be attributed to physical exercise are due to improvements in cardiovascular fitness, although the temporal association suggests that this might be the case. Larger studies are still required to confirm whether the aerobic training component is necessary, or whether the same can be achieved with any type of physical exercise. At the same time, it would be informative to understand why some cognitive functions seem to improve with (aerobic) physical exercise while other functions seem to be insensitive to physical exercise.
Clinicians and scientists in the field of neuropsychology should seek mutual agreement on a smaller battery of cognitive tests to use, in order to render research on cognition clinically relevant and transparent and heighten the reproducibility of results for future research.