Influence of Fitness on Brain and Cognition

描述（由申请人提供）：本研究旨在探讨有氧健身训练对老年人认知、脑结构和脑功能的影响。我们的研究受到健身训练对人类认知（Coxcomb & Kramer, 2003）和最近人类大脑结构和功能（Colcombe et al., 2003, in press）的鼓舞作用的推动。这些影响非常有趣，因为它们告诉我们认知和大脑衰老的本质，也因为它们对公共卫生的影响。我们研究的主要具体目的包括：1)验证这样一个假设，即老年人有氧健身的改善将导致各种认知过程的表现改善，更具体地说，这些过程在很大程度上是由大脑额叶区支持的。2)从3特斯拉扫描仪获得的功能磁共振成像激活模式推断，有氧健身增强所带来的认知过程的改善将得到潜在神经回路变化的支持。我们假设，有氧适应性的改善导致的fMRI激活模式的变化将接近年轻人所表现出的激活模式。3)为了验证这一假设，即在1年的干预过程中，有氧适应性的改善将导致人类大脑区域（即主要是额叶、内侧颞叶和顶叶）灰质和白质体积的增加，而这些区域在横断面研究中已被证明是保留的。4)为了验证由有氧健身改善引起的胰岛素样生长因子I （IGF1）水平的增加和炎症标志物（即c反应蛋白和白细胞介素-6）的减少将调节认知、脑功能和结构测量中观察到的健身益处的假设。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal examines the effect of aerobic fitness training on human cognition, brain structure, and brain function of older adults. Our study is prompted by the encouraging effects of fitness training on human cognition, (Coxcomb & Kramer, 2003) and more recently human brain structure and function (Colcombe et al., 2003, in press). Such effects are of great interest both for what they tell us about the nature of cognitive and brain aging and also for their public health implications. The main specific aims of our studies include: 1) To test the hypothesis that improvements in aerobic fitness of older adults will lead to improved performance on a variety of cognitive processes, and more specifically those processes that are supported, in large part, by frontal regions of the brain. 2) To test the hypothesis that the improvements in cognitive processes engendered by enhanced aerobic fitness will be supported by changes in underlying neural circuits, as inferred from patterns of fMRI activation obtained in a 3 tesla scanner. We hypothesize that the changes in the patterns of fMRI activation that result from improvements in aerobic fitness will approach those activation patterns exhibited by young adults. 3) To test the hypothesis that improvements in aerobic fitness, over the course of a 1 year intervention, will result in increases in gray and white matter volume in regions of the human brain (i.e. primarily frontal, medial temporal and parietal) that have previously been demonstrated to show sparing in cross-sectional studies. 4) To test the hypothesis that increased levels of insulin-like growth factor I (IGF1) and decreases in markers of inflammation (i.e. C-reactive protein & interleukin-6) engendered by improvements in aerobic fitness will moderate the fitness benefits observed on measures of cognition, brain function and structure.