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Benefits of Physical Exercise on the Aging Brain: The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex
Motor planning in older adults likely relies on the overengagement of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and is associated with slowness of movement and responses. Does a physically active lifestyle counteract the overrecruitment of the PFC during action preparation? This study used high-resolution electro...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Oxford University Press
2013
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3805300/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23833198 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glt094 |
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author | Berchicci, Marika Lucci, Giuliana Di Russo, Francesco |
author_facet | Berchicci, Marika Lucci, Giuliana Di Russo, Francesco |
author_sort | Berchicci, Marika |
collection | PubMed |
description | Motor planning in older adults likely relies on the overengagement of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and is associated with slowness of movement and responses. Does a physically active lifestyle counteract the overrecruitment of the PFC during action preparation? This study used high-resolution electroencephalography to measure the effect of physical exercise on the executive functions of the PFC preceding a visuomotor discriminative task. A total of 130 participants aged 15–86 were divided into two groups based on physical exercise participation. The response times and accuracy and the premotor activity of the PFC were separately correlated with age for the two groups. The data were first fit with a linear function and then a higher order polynomial function. We observed that after 35–40 years of age, physically active individuals have faster response times than their less active peers and showed no signs of PFC hyperactivity during motor planning. The present findings show that physical exercise could speed up the response of older people and reveal that also in middle-aged people, moderate-to-high levels of physical exercise benefits the planning/execution of a response and the executive functions mediated by the PFC, counteracting the neural overactivity often observed in the elderly adults. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3805300 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2013 |
publisher | Oxford University Press |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-38053002013-10-23 Benefits of Physical Exercise on the Aging Brain: The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex Berchicci, Marika Lucci, Giuliana Di Russo, Francesco J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci Brief Report Motor planning in older adults likely relies on the overengagement of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and is associated with slowness of movement and responses. Does a physically active lifestyle counteract the overrecruitment of the PFC during action preparation? This study used high-resolution electroencephalography to measure the effect of physical exercise on the executive functions of the PFC preceding a visuomotor discriminative task. A total of 130 participants aged 15–86 were divided into two groups based on physical exercise participation. The response times and accuracy and the premotor activity of the PFC were separately correlated with age for the two groups. The data were first fit with a linear function and then a higher order polynomial function. We observed that after 35–40 years of age, physically active individuals have faster response times than their less active peers and showed no signs of PFC hyperactivity during motor planning. The present findings show that physical exercise could speed up the response of older people and reveal that also in middle-aged people, moderate-to-high levels of physical exercise benefits the planning/execution of a response and the executive functions mediated by the PFC, counteracting the neural overactivity often observed in the elderly adults. Oxford University Press 2013-11 2013-07-05 /pmc/articles/PMC3805300/ /pubmed/23833198 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glt094 Text en © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com |
spellingShingle | Brief Report Berchicci, Marika Lucci, Giuliana Di Russo, Francesco Benefits of Physical Exercise on the Aging Brain: The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex |
title | Benefits of Physical Exercise on the Aging Brain: The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex |
title_full | Benefits of Physical Exercise on the Aging Brain: The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex |
title_fullStr | Benefits of Physical Exercise on the Aging Brain: The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex |
title_full_unstemmed | Benefits of Physical Exercise on the Aging Brain: The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex |
title_short | Benefits of Physical Exercise on the Aging Brain: The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex |
title_sort | benefits of physical exercise on the aging brain: the role of the prefrontal cortex |
topic | Brief Report |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3805300/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23833198 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glt094 |
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