Article 9: Adaptive Capacity: An Evolutionary Neuroscience Model Linking Exercise, Cognition and Brain Health (Raichlen, Alexander)

Question 1

• Beneficial effect of aerobics exercise on cognition across lifespan
• Exercise linked to cognition because evolutionary history included a shift cognitively demanding foraging patterns that required combining elements of motor control, memory, spatial navigation, and executive functions with high levels of aerobic physical activities.
• ACM
The ACM
• Aerobics exercise can induce neuroplasticityneurogenesis
An Evolutionary Neuroscience Approach to Brain Health
• Reliance on exercise for health maintenance because humans were hunters and gatherers
• Physiological capacity reductions in respond to lack of stimuli are adaptive, reduce metabolic requirements freeing energy e.g. for reproducing
• Less exercisereduction in capacitychronic illness
• Physiological response to exercise is heritable
• Brain has highest mass-specific metabolism rate particularly susceptible to capacity reduction
Mechanisms underlying the ACM
• Behavioral set-point is lifelong physical activity
• No exercise= energy-saving decline
• Neurodegenerative diseases only when met with too little exercise?
• Combination of exercise and cognitive engagement= acute stimulus for preservation or enhancement of neural capacity
• Exercise=also demands on brain
• Exercise=stresses cognitive domains linked to foraging, strong selection pressure
• Increased effect on neuronal survival when physical and cognitive challenges are combined
• Exercising muscles produce myokines regulates metabolic processesincreased levels for BDNF (molecular mechanism for neurogenesis)

Region Specific Effects and the Origin of Healthy Brain Aging
• Neuroplasticity depends on: combination of neurogenesis, synaptogenesis, capacity for myelin remodeling
• Capacity maintenance through neurogenesis only when needed to meet specific cognitive demands
Support for the ACM
Combined Exercise and Cognitive Training in Animal Models
• Animals: new neurons produced by exercise more likely to survive when exercise followed by cognitive task
Combined Exercise and Cognitive Training in Humans
• The shorter the delays, the better the results
• Some aspects of memory may benefit from time delay (LTM)
• VR while biking more BDNF
Concluding Remarks
• Growing evidence that physical exercise /combined with cognitive task beneficial/protects against neural loss
• Brain atrophy= adaptive response
• Moderate intensity exercise=greatest benefit

Answer 1

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