Masters athletes exhibit larger regional brain volume and better cognitive performance than sedentary older adults

Abstract

Purpose To investigate differences in the age-related decline in brain tissue concentration between Masters athletes and sedentary older adults. Materials and Methods Twelve Masters athletes (MA) (3 females, age=72.4±5.6yrs, endurance training>15yrs), 12 sedentary elderly (SE) similar in age and educational level (4 females, age=74.6±4.3yrs), and 9 young controls (YC)(4 females, age=27.2±3.6yrs) participated. T1-weighted-high-resolution (1×1×1mm3) images were acquired. Voxel-based analysis was conducted to identify clusters showing tissue concentration differences with t-tests. Cognitive function was assessed using a standard clinical battery focused on executive function and memory. Results Two Masters athletes and 2 sedentary elderly were unable to complete MRI study. Both SE and MA showed lower GM concentrations than YC in the superior, inferior and middle frontal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, postcentral gyrus and the cingulate gyrus (PFDR-corrected<0.001) and lower WM concentrations in the inferior frontal gyrus and precentral gyrus (PFDR-corrected<0.005). Notably, MA showed higher GM and WM concentrations than SE in the sub-gyral, cuneus, and precuneus regions related to visuospatial function, motor control, and working memory (PFDR-corrected<0.005). After controlling for estimated intelligence, MA outperformed SE on tasks of letter (p<0.01) and category (p<0.05) fluency. Conclusion Life-long exercise may confer benefits to some aspects of executive function and age-related brain tissue loss in the regions related to visuospatial function, motor control, and working memory in older adults.

Long-Term High-Effort Endurance Exercise in Older Adults: Diminishing Returns for Cognitive and Brain Aging

“…Our results on this comprehensive battery of cognitive tasks complement outcomes from other recent studies of senior athletes (Tseng, Uh, et al, 2013;Winker et al, 2010). Both reported benefits only on fluency tasks, though substantive test batteries were administered in each of these studies.…”

“…Long-term higheffort endurance athletes who are continuing their regimes beyond the sixth decade of life are a specialist and elite group. Their numbers are limited, and our group sizes, while larger than those reported previously (Tseng, Gundapuneedi, et al (2013) and Tseng, Uh, et al (2013) reflect this.…”

“…Tseng, Uh, et al (2013) reported a cross-sectional study that compared a small group of twelve older runners with sedentary older adults also similar in age, sex, and education.…”

“…We used whole volume analysis (Erickson et al, 2009Resnick et al, 2003), automated segmentation (Resnick et al, 2003), Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM) (Tseng, Uh, et al, 2013), longitudinal VBM (Colcombe et al, , 2006, and…”

“…Using Freesurfer, we were able to do both these analyses within the same software package. For volumes we chose hippocampus (Erickson et al, 2009Lövdén et al, 2012;Raz et al, 2010;Uylings & de Brabander, 2002), cerebellar cortex (Raz et al, 2013(Raz et al, , 2010Tseng, Uh, et al, 2013), cerebellar white matter (Raz et al, 2013(Raz et al, , 2010Tseng, Uh, et al, 2013), and caudate (Raz et al, 2013(Raz et al, , 2010. For cortical thickness we looked at entorhinal cortex (Raz et al, 2010), frontal lobes (Colcombe et al, , 2006Raz et al, 2013;Resnick et al, 2003;Uylings & de Brabander, 2002), and parietal lobes Resnick et al, 2003;Tseng, Uh, et al, 2013).…”