Fitness Effects on the Cognitive Function of Older Adults: A Meta-Analytic Study—Revisited

Kramer, Arthur F.; Colcombe, Stanley J.

doi:10.1177/1745691617707316

Cited by 232 publications

(190 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Although researchers have demonstrated that physical activity can boost EF (Best, 2010), a review by Diamond and Liang (2015) suggested that the cognitive component of aerobic activity was the mechanism of change, rather than exercise exclusively. (A similar conclusion regarding the key role of aerobic activity has been offered regarding exercise and cognitive benefits in old age; Kramer & Colcombe, 2018). Flynn and Richert (2018) tested this hypothesis by manipulating the level of physical activity and cognitive engagement over four conditions: exergame play, sedentary video game play, exercise, and a nonplaying control.…”

Section: Media Use During Middle Childhoodmentioning

confidence: 79%

Digital Games as a Context for Children's Cognitive Development: Research Recommendations and Policy Considerations

Blumberg

Deater‐Deckard

Calvert

et al. 2019

Social Policy Report

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We document the need to examine digital game play and app use as a context for cognitive development, particularly during middle childhood. We highlight this developmental period as 6‐ through 12‐year olds comprise a large swath of the preadult population that plays and uses these media forms. Surprisingly, this age range remains understudied with regard to the impact of their interactive media use as compared to young children and adolescents. This gap in knowledge about middle childhood may reflect strong and widely held concerns about the effects of digital games and apps before and after this period. These concerns include concurrent and subsequent influences of game use on very young children's and adolescents’ cognitive and socioemotional functioning. We highlight here what is currently known about the impact of media on young children and adolescents and what is not known about this impact in middle childhood. We then offer recommendations for the types of research that developmental scientists can undertake to examine the efficacy of digital games within the rapidly changing media ecology in which children live. We conclude with a discussion of media policies that we believe can help children benefit from their media use. Our hope is that this review will foster greater investigation of the cognitive socialization, as raised over 20 years ago by developmental psychologist and early games researcher Patricia Greenfield, that digital games serve during the middle childhood period, and childhood more generally.

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Section: Media Use During Middle Childhoodmentioning

confidence: 79%

Digital Games as a Context for Children's Cognitive Development: Research Recommendations and Policy Considerations

Blumberg

Deater‐Deckard

Calvert

et al. 2019

Social Policy Report

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…They observed that higher levels of physical activity did not result in greater survival benefits than less high levels of physical activity. Similarly, a meta-analysis by Kramer et al suggests that long-term exercise is not as beneficial as moderate-length exercise in improving cognitive performance in older adults [28]. In the process of aging, there is also an inverted 'U' relationship between exercise and oxidative stress-related physiological functions and quality of life.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationships of accelerometer-based measured objective physical activity and sedentary behaviour with cognitive function: a comparative cross-sectional study of China’s elderly population

Wang

Hu³

et al. 2020

BMC Geriatr

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Background: This study explored the effects of physical activity and sedentary behaviour on the decline of cognitive ability among the elderly. To compensate for the limitations of self-reported physical activity, objective measures were used. Methods: A cross-sectional survey of 308 aged people mean 68.66 ± 5.377 years, in Nanjing, China, was conducted. Physical activity was measured using the ActiGraph GT3X+, and cognitive function was measured using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. Results: The overall participant model, adjusted for age, BMI, education, and monthly average income, found that light physical activity (β = 0.006, p < 0.01), moderate-vigorous physical activity (β = 0.068, p < 0.001), and total physical activity (β = 0.006, p < 0.01) had a significant linear relationship with cognitive ability, while sedentary time did not (β = − 0.020, p>0.05). Further, light physical activity only affects the cognitive ability of elderly females (β = 0.006, p < 0.05). There was an inverted 'U' association between moderate-vigorous physical activity and cognitive ability. The association models found that moderate-vigorous physical activity in the 22.13 min·day − 1~3 8.79 min·day − 1 range affected cognitive ability most beneficially, with the highest beta coefficient among all groups (β = 0.091, p < 0.05). Conclusions: While physical activity can significantly improve cognitive ability among the elderly, sedentary behaviour is associated with decreased cognitive function across genders.

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“…The strongest evidence for a relationship between CRF, hippocampal volume, and memory would come from a randomized controlled trial involving a structured exercise intervention known to increase CRF. Many such studies have shown evidence of a relationship between aerobic exercise and cognition (for review see A. F. Kramer & Colcombe, 2018;Voss et al, 2019), though none have utilized a task like the EAL task, which specifically targets aspects of hippocampal function that are critically important for accumulating episodic information over repeated occurrences. Nonetheless, our findings do align with previous evidence of exercise interventions resulting in increased brain structure, brain function, and cognition, as well as with other cross-sectional studies of CRF, hippocampal volume, and various aspects of memory (Erickson et al, 2009;Hayes et al, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cardiorespiratory fitness predicts greater hippocampal volume and rate of episodic associative learning in older adults

Cole

Hazeltine

Weng

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Declining episodic memory is common among otherwise healthy older adults, in part due to negative effects of aging on hippocampal circuits. However, there is significant variability between individuals in severity of aging effects on the hippocampus and subsequent memory decline. Importantly, variability may be influenced by modifiable protective physiological factors such as cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF). More research is needed to better understand which aspects of cognition that decline with aging benefit most from CRF. The current study evaluated the relation of CRF with learning rate in the Episodic Associative Learning (EAL) task, a task designed specifically to target hippocampal-dependent relational binding and to evaluate learning with repeated occurrences. Results show that higher CRF was associated with larger hippocampal volume and faster learning rate. Larger hippocampal volume was also associated with faster learning rate, and hippocampal volume partially mediated the relationship between CRF and learning rate. Further, to support the distinction between learning item relations and learning higher-order sequences, which declines with aging but is largely reliant on extra-hippocampal learning systems, we found that EAL learning rate was not related to motor sequence learning on the alternating serial reaction time task. Motor sequence learning was also not correlated with hippocampal volume. Thus, for the first time we show that higher CRF in healthy older adults is related to enhanced rate of relational memory acquisition, in part mediated by benefits on the hippocampus.

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Fitness Effects on the Cognitive Function of Older Adults: A Meta-Analytic Study—Revisited

Cited by 232 publications

References 31 publications

Digital Games as a Context for Children's Cognitive Development: Research Recommendations and Policy Considerations

Digital Games as a Context for Children's Cognitive Development: Research Recommendations and Policy Considerations

Relationships of accelerometer-based measured objective physical activity and sedentary behaviour with cognitive function: a comparative cross-sectional study of China’s elderly population

Cardiorespiratory fitness predicts greater hippocampal volume and rate of episodic associative learning in older adults

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