Physical activity boosts cognitive performance in middle-aged and older adults, study shows

A new study by researchers at The 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 participants who wore accelerometers while physically active and completed mobile cognitive testing from home.

"The future of lifestyle interventions really needs to be remote-based. The pandemic has made this especially clear."

Raeanne Moore, PhD, associate professor, Department of Psychiatry, UC San Diego School of Medicine and principal investigator of the study

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 are published January 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, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry 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 comorbidities and demographics 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 did not 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."