Exercise Effects on Brain Health and Learning From Minutes to Months

Animal models robustly support that exercise protects brain areas vulnerable to aging such as
the hippocampus and that these benefits lead to better learning. In contrast, there are mixed
findings from human studies on the cognitive benefits of exercise with healthy older adults.
This contrast indicates there is still a lack of understanding for how exercise could change
the course of cognitive decline in aging adults. However, no human studies have
comprehensively tested exercise effects on cognition in older adults with learning tasks
inspired from basic exercise neuroscience. The objective in the proposed research is to fill
this translational gap by determining if different types of exercise improve the same kinds
of learning in older adults that have been shown to improve in animal models by improving
hippocampal function. This will bring the investigators closer to a long-term goal of
determining how exercise protects the brain from adverse effects of aging in order to develop
interventions that minimize age-related cognitive decline. The overall hypothesis is that
exercise improves learning when it increases functional hippocampal-cortical communication
that otherwise declines with aging. The investigators will test this in a sample of healthy
older adults by determining if increases in functional hippocampal-cortical connectivity from
exercise training improve learning on an array of tasks that require the hippocampus for
acquisition of new relational memories compared to conditions of the same tasks that should
not require the hippocampus for learning and memory.

Inclusion Criteria:

- Eligible to participate in an aerobic exercise intervention based on the Physical
Activity Readiness Questionnaire, and corrected vision of 20/40.

- Approval from a physician that monitored electrocardiography (ECG) response during a
maximal aerobic fitness test that is part of the second study visit described below.

- Exercising less than 60 minutes a week for the past calendar year

Exclusion Criteria:

- Not between the ages of 55 and 80 years old

- Not fluent in English

- Score < 20 (out of 30) on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA)

- Inability to comply with experimental instructions

- Qualify as "high risk" for acute cardiovascular event by the published standards of
the American College of Sports Medicine

- Previous diagnosis of neurological, metabolic, or psychiatric condition, and no
previous brain injury associated with loss of consciousness

- Inability to complete an MRI