A cou­ple of recent stud­ies have rein­forced the life­long poten­tial for brain plas­tic­ity (the abil­ity of the brain to rewire itself through expe­ri­ence) and the impor­tance of phys­i­cal exer­cise for cog­ni­tive vital­ity. One study focused on 1) adults over 50 with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, the other one on 2) stroke survivors.

1)  Mem­ory prob­lems: Adults 50-years-old and over with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment (an advanced form of mem­ory prob­lems, but pre-dementia) were asked to exer­cise for three 50-minute ses­sions per week for 24 weeks (a total of 60 hours). Results: there were small, but mea­sur­able, cog­ni­tive ben­e­fits even 18 months after the start of the pro­gram (around a year after the super­vised exer­cise activ­i­ties ended).
Study: Nicola T. Laut­en­schlager et al. Effect of Phys­i­cal Activ­ity on Cog­ni­tive Func­tion in Older Adults at Risk for Alzheimer Dis­ease. Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion, 3 Sep­tem­ber 2008 [link]

2) Stroke Rehab: the study showed how sus­tained phys­i­cal reha­bil­i­ta­tion can have a ben­e­fi­cial brain impact for stroke sur­vivors, and that the effect was more clear by walk­ing in a tread­mill (as a car­dio­vas­cu­lar exer­cise) than by doing assisted stretch­ing exercises.

The press release for the other study, Tread­mill Exer­cise Retrains Brain And Body Of Stroke Vic­tims, con­tains this quote:“This is great news for stroke sur­vivors because results clearly demon­strate that long-term stroke dam­age is not immutable and that with exer­cise it’s never too late for the brain and body to recover,” says Daniel Han­ley, M.D., pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­ogy at the Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity School of Medicine.

Indeed, there is no rea­son why the process of phys­i­cal and cog­ni­tive reha­bil­i­ta­tion (or “enhance­ment”) should ever stop, either as part of for­mal ther­apy or as a lifestyle mod­i­fi­ca­tion.
This Los Ange­les Times arti­cle, Brain func­tion gets a boost from walk­ing, pro­vides good com­men­tary on both stud­ies, and includes this nice quote:

“The act of doing a move­ment over and over can also stim­u­late the brain’s neu­ro­cir­cuits, he adds, result­ing in activ­ity in var­i­ous regions of the brain. That activ­ity may decrease over time as the body becomes more effi­cient at the activ­ity. But other stim­u­la­tion can have an effect — while a per­son walks out­side with a friend, for exam­ple, the brain is guid­ing a num­ber of activ­i­ties, such as talk­ing and observing.”

Which is why we always empha­size the impor­tance of  nov­elty and chal­lenge. Doing the same thing over and over and over and over, with the same level of dif­fi­culty, brings lim­ited if any cog­ni­tive benefits.

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