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The Effects of Aerobic Exercise Training on Cerebrovascular and Cognitive Function in Sedentary, Obese, Older Adults

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posted on 2025-05-09, 03:06 authored by Edward S. Bliss, Rachel H. X. Wong, Peter HowePeter Howe, Dean E. Mills
Cerebrovascular function and cognition decline with age and are further exacerbated by obesity and physical inactivity. This decline may be offset by aerobic exercise training (AT). We investigated the effects of 16 weeks AT on cerebrovascular and cognitive function in sedentary, obese, older adults. Twenty-eight participants were randomly allocated to AT or a control group. Before and after the intervention, transcranial Doppler ultrasonography was used to measure the cerebrovascular responsiveness (CVR) to physiological (hypercapnia, 5% carbon dioxide) and cognitive stimuli. AT increased the CVR to hypercapnia (98.5 ± 38.4% vs. 58.0 ± 42.0%, P = 0.021), CVR to cognitive stimuli (25.9 ± 6.1% vs. 16.4 ± 5.4%, P < 0.001) and total composite cognitive score (111 ± 14 vs. 104 ± 14, P = 0.004) compared with the control group. A very strong relationship was observed between the number of exercise sessions completed and CVR to cognitive stimuli (r = 0.878, P < 0.001), but not for CVR to hypercapnia (r = 0.246, P = 0.397) or total composite cognitive score (r = 0.213, P = 0.465). Cerebrovascular function and cognition improved following 16 weeks of AT and a dose-response relationship exists between the amount of exercise sessions performed and CVR to cognitive stimuli.

History

Journal title

Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience

Volume

14

Article number

892343

Publisher

Frontiers Research Foundation

Language

  • en, English

College/Research Centre

College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing

School

School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy

Rights statement

© 2022 Bliss, Wong, Howe and Mills. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),(CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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