Regular physical activity, even low-intensity daily routines like walking or playing with children, can significantly enhance cognitive processing speed.
Using a smartphone app for data collection over nine days, the research highlights that regular movement, including everyday activities, could play a crucial role in improving brain function and possibly reducing dementia risk over time.
Cognitive Benefits of Physical Activity
Everyday physical activities, like taking a short walk or playing with kids, may offer immediate cognitive benefits similar to reversing four years of brain aging. This was a key finding from our recent study published in the journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine.
To explore the link between lifestyle and cognitive health, we recruited 204 middle-aged adults from diverse backgrounds. Before joining a broader study on diet and dementia risk, participants used a smartphone app to check in five times a day for nine days.
During each check-in, participants completed a brief survey about their mood, dietary habits, and any physical activity they had done in the past three and a half hours. They also played short brain games — one-minute cognitive tests designed to measure mental speed and short-term memory performance.
Impact of Physical Activity on Cognitive Speed
My team found that performance on our measure of cognitive processing speed improved during check-ins when participants reported being physically active in the time leading up to the survey. While we didn’t see improvements in our measure of working memory, the time taken to complete the memory task mirrored what we saw for the measure of processing speed.
We observed these improvements in speed regardless of whether the activity was lighter intensity or moderate-to-vigorous intensity. This led us to conclude that movement, whether it took the form of intentional exercise or part of a daily routine, was the essential ingredient for achieving this benefit.
Broader Implications and Future Research Directions
As a rule, we get slower, both physically and mentally, as we age. While research on exercise and living a healthy lifestyle has demonstrated the long-term cognitive and brain health benefits of remaining physically active, much of this work has focused on the moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity – or what most of us think of as exercise – recommended by the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans.
Still, these guidelines and other experts recommend that adults move more and sit less.
My colleagues and I are interested in understanding how moving more can improve our cognitive health or reduce our risk of dementia as we age, at what timescale these benefits show up, and what types of movement qualify.
Exercise promotes blood circulation and the growth of neurons.
Challenges and Limitations in Current Research
Our study relied on participants to report whether they had been physically active during the time between each check-in. Even though participants were provided training on how to think about the intensity levels, it’s possible that each participant had a slightly different perception of their activities.
For example, a participant may not have believed their recent walk actually qualified as a moderate-intensity activity. Physical activity monitors that can dissociate time and intensity might help future research unravel these associations more clearly.
The Potential for Long-term Cognitive Improvement
It isn’t yet clear whether these short-term benefits accumulate over time to result in long-term improvements in brain health and dementia risk reduction. Research efforts are underway by our team to better understand these associations over broader timescales.
My research involves data collection via smartphones and wearable devices to help us better understand how health-promoting behaviors and cognitive health interact as we age. This type of digital approach allows my team to pursue questions about how everyday behavior and experience influence cognition in daily life and represents a significant methodological advancement in the dementia risk and prevention research space.
Using these tools, we aim to better identify individuals at risk for negative cognitive outcomes and new targets for dementia prevention.
Written by Jonathan G. Hakun, Assistant Professor of Neurology, Psychology, & Public Health Sciences, Penn State.
Adapted from an article originally published in The Conversation.
Reference: “Cognitive Health Benefits of Everyday Physical Activity in a Diverse Sample of Middle-Aged Adults” by Jonathan G Hakun, Lizbeth Benson, Tian Qiu, Daniel B Elbich, Mindy Katz, Pamela A Shaw, Martin J Sliwinski and Yasmin Mossavar-Rahmani, 19 October 2024, Annals of Behavioral Medicine.
DOI: 10.1093/abm/kaae059
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