Influence of Fitness on Brain and Cognition

描述(由申请人提供)：本建议研究有氧健身训练对老年人的认知、脑结构和脑功能的影响。我们的研究是由健身训练对人类认知的令人鼓舞的效果(Coxcomb&Kramer，2003)和最近的人类大脑结构和功能(Colcombe等人，2003，出版社)推动的。这样的影响非常有趣，因为它们告诉我们关于认知和大脑老化的本质，以及它们对公共健康的影响。我们研究的主要具体目标包括：1)检验这样一种假设，即老年人有氧健康的改善将导致各种认知过程表现的改善，更具体地说，那些在很大程度上由大脑额叶区域支持的过程。2)检验这一假设，即有氧适能增强带来的认知过程的改善将得到潜在神经回路的变化的支持，这是从3Tesla扫描仪获得的fMRI激活模式推断的。我们假设，有氧适应能力的改善导致的功能磁共振激活模式的变化将接近年轻人表现出的激活模式。3)验证这样一种假设，即在一年的干预过程中，有氧适应能力的改善将导致人脑区域(主要是额叶、内侧颞叶和顶叶)灰质和白质体积的增加，这些区域以前在横断面研究中已被证明是节俭的。4)检验这样一种假设，即有氧健身的改善导致胰岛素样生长因子I(IGF1)水平的升高和炎症标志物(即C-反应蛋白和白细胞介素6)的减少将减缓在认知、大脑功能和结构方面观察到的健身益处。

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.