| As we age,our brain undergoes a series of deleterious changes,including grey and white matter atrophy,synaptic degeneration,blood flow reductions,and neurochemical alterations.Given this change,it is not surprising that older adults perform more poorly than young adults in a variety of cognitive tasks,including perception,attention,and memory tasks.Studies confirmed that working memory is the most sensitive to age damage,and in elderly the ability of working memory is closely related to the quality of life.According to the studies of cognitive aging,regular,exercise can effectively improve the executive function of aging.However,studies investigating the effect of exercise on executive function of the elderly.Few studies have investigated the effect of exercise on memory load of working memory.This study will focus on the issue related to the effect of regular exercise on working memory of the elderly.And we focus on the improvement of exercise on working memory,and current study will be built on the adaptive ability model.The purpose is to address the characteristics and brain mechanism of the effect of exercise for the old adults.All participant were healthy older adults in current study.All participant were divided into exercise and non-exercise groups classified by exercise habits.Current study will developed from two parts of the study : Study 1 to explore the relationship between exercise and the elderly’s cognitive ability and working memory through questionnaire data and behavior measurement.We investigated the relationship between cognitive ability of the elderly with exercise and non-exercise group in general(experiment 1).Using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment(MoCA)scale and the repetitive neuropsychological assessment(RBANS)questionnaire,we explore the characteristics of general cognitive ability between the elderly with exercise and nonexercise group.Furthermore,present study investigated whether the exercise-induced benefit of working memory was manifested in three memory load condition in the exercise group and non-exercise group(experiment 1B).Study 2 was to.examine difference in exercise-induced gray matter changes and resting functional connectivity patterns in exercise group and non-exercise group.The main result of current studies are follows.(1)It was found that the score of MoCA and RBANS in the exercise group was higher than non-exercise group,particularly working memory.(2)Exercise group was more accurate than the nonexercise group in the N-back task,especially under the condition of high memory load,the elderly in the exercise group was significantly better than that in the non-exercise group,especially under the condition of high memory load.(3)Voxel-based morphometry identified significantly increased gray matter volume in exercise group,especially in superior frontal gyrus/middle frontal gyrus/parahippocampus,inferior temporal gyrus/fusiform and percuneus/posterior cingulate which is associated with working memory.(4)Results showed that as compared to exercise group,non-exercise group had significantly higher functional connectivity between precuneus/posterior and middle frontal gyrus / anterior cerebellar lobe.(5)There is a positive correlation between the accuracy and the function connectivity strength of the pre-central gyrus in the condition of low memory load.However in the condition of high memory load,there is an inverse correlation between the function connectivity strength and left posterior cingulate gyrus.The main conclusion of the current study:(1)older adults with physical exercise have better cognitive ability than the non-exercise group.(2)The elderly participating in exercise may effect on working memory,especially in the higher cognitive demands.(3)Exercise is associated with structural change in the brain.(4)And exercise is also associated with function changes in the brain and exercise group reorganized the cognitive network.(5)The improvement of brain function by exercise may be regulated by the difficulty of the task. |
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