Background: Physical activity has been associated with a wide range of health benefits including long-term benefits for cognitive and brain health. Whether episodes of everyday physical activity are associated with immediate cognitive benefits remains unknown.
Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to examine whether episodes of physical activity, occurring over the course of participants' daily lives, are associated with short-term improvements in cognitive health.
Methods: Participants completed a 9-day ecological momentary assessment protocol involving 5 daily assessments of self-reported physical activity and ambulatory cognitive assessments of processing speed and visuospatial working memory. Data were analyzed in a multilevel modeling framework to explore changes in performance on each task associated with physical activity during the period leading up to the assessment as well as individual differences in average frequency of physical activity.
Results: Results of MLMs indicated that engaging in physical activity during the period (~3.5 hr) leading up to an assessment was associated with improvements in processing speed equivalent to 4 years of cognitive aging. Such improvements were observed for both light and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity levels. No association was observed for visuospatial working memory accuracy; however, response time during the working memory task reliably mirrored the association observed for processing speed. The short-term benefits were observed, particularly, for individuals with an overall higher frequency of reported physical activity.
Conclusions: Our findings suggest that engaging in everyday physical activity of any intensity level may have short-term, acute benefits for cognitive health and point to new potential targets for intervention.
Clinical trial information: NCT03240406.
Keywords: Ambulatory assessment; Cognition; EMA; Physical activity.
Exercise may help improve brain health and prevent brain disease (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease). But, what are the possible brain health benefits of “everyday” types of physical activities like playing with our kids or walking the dog? The challenge is designing a study that can see these benefits in action. Recent advances in smartphones allow us to interact with research participants continuously as they go about their daily lives. We asked our participants to check in with us 6 times per day (every ~3.5 hrs) for 7 days and report whether they had been physically active in the past few hours. Every time they checked in, we also asked them to play a few “brain games” (brief cognitive assessments) to measure their cognitive functioning throughout each day. When participants reported being physically active sometime in the previous 3.5 hrs, they showed improvements in mental speed equivalent to being 4 years younger. This benefit was observed regardless of whether the activities they reported were higher intensity (e.g., running/jogging) or lower intensity (e.g., walking, chores). These findings suggest that everyday physical activity may promote cognitive health in midlife and that the benefits may be enjoyed immediately.
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