Brief exercise immediately enhances memory, UCI study finds

Results apply to older adults both with and without cognitive deficits

2012-11-27

(Press-News.org) Irvine, Calif., Nov. 26, 2012 — A short burst of moderate exercise enhances the consolidation of memories in both healthy older adults and those with mild cognitive impairment, scientists with UC Irvine's Center for the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory have discovered.

Most research has focused on the benefits of a long-term exercise program on overall health and cognitive function with age. But the UCI work is the first to examine the immediate effects of a brief bout of exercise on memory.

In their study, UCI postdoctoral scholar Sabrina Segal and neurobiologists Carl Cotman and Lawrence Cahill had people 50 to 85 years old with and without memory deficits view pleasant images – such as photos of nature and animals – and then exercise on a stationary bicycle for six minutes at 70 percent of their maximum capacity immediately afterward.

One hour later, the participants were given a surprise recall test on the previously viewed images. Results showed a striking enhancement of memory by exercise in both the healthy and cognitively impaired adults, compared with subjects who did not ride the bike.

"We found that a single, short instance of moderately intense exercise particularly improved memory in individuals with memory deficits," Segal said. "Because of its implications and the need to better understand the mechanism by which exercise may enhance memory, we're following up this study with an investigation of potential underlying biological factors."

She believes the improved memory may be related to the exercise-induced release of norepinephrine, a chemical messenger in the brain known to play a strong role in memory modulation. This hypothesis is based on previous work demonstrating that increasing norepinephrine through pharmacological manipulation sharpens memory and that blocking norepinephrine impairs memory.

In the more recent research, Segal and her colleagues discovered that levels of salivary alpha amylase, a biomarker that reflects norepinephrine activity in the brain, significantly increased in participants after exercise. This correlation was especially strong in people with memory impairment.

"The current findings offer a natural and relatively safe alternative to pharmacological interventions for memory enhancement in healthy older individuals as well as those who suffer from cognitive deficits," Segal noted. "With a growing population of the aged, the need for improvement of quality of life and prevention of mental decline is more important than ever before."

### Study results appear in the November issue (Volume 32, Number 4) of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. UCI's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center and the National Institute of Mental Health (grant number 575082), a division of the National Institutes of Health, supported the research.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is a top-ranked university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Led by Chancellor Michael Drake since 2005, UCI is among the most dynamic campuses in the University of California system, with more than 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students, 1,100 faculty and 9,400 staff. Orange County's second-largest employer, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $4.3 billion. For more UCI news, visit www.today.uci.edu.

News Radio: UCI maintains on campus an ISDN line for conducting interviews with its faculty and experts. Use of this line is available for a fee to radio news programs/stations that wish to interview UCI faculty and experts. Use of the ISDN line is subject to availability and approval by the university. NOTE TO EDITORS: Photo available at http://news.uci.edu/press-releases/brief-exercise-immediately-enhances-memory-uci-study-finds/

Contact: Tom Vasich
949-824-6455
tmvasich@uci.edu UCI maintains an online directory of faculty available as experts to the media. To access, visit www.today.uci.edu/experts. For UCI breaking news, visit www.zotwire.uci.edu.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

New behavioral strategies may help patients learn to better control chronic diseases

2012-11-27

One of the most important health problems in the United States is the failure of patients with chronic diseases to take their medications and do all that is necessary to control their illnesses. In a study published online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, UCLA researchers and their colleagues suggest that physicians take a serious look at tools and strategies used in behavioral economics and social psychology to help motivate their patients to assert better control over chronic diseases. Breaking large goals into smaller, more manageable parts, for example, ...

USC, Oxford researchers find high fructose corn syrup-global prevalence of diabetes link

2012-11-27

LOS ANGELES AND OXFORD, U.K.— A new study by University of Southern California (USC) and University of Oxford researchers indicates that large amounts of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) found in national food supplies across the world may be one explanation for the rising global epidemic of type 2 diabetes and resulting higher health care costs. The study reports that countries that use HFCS in their food supply had a 20 percent higher prevalence of diabetes than countries that did not use HFCS. The analysis also revealed that HFCS's association with the "significantly ...

Administrative data set not always best source for number of surgical complications

2012-11-27

Charlottesville, VA (November 27, 2012). Hospital administrative databases, designed to provide general information on hospital stays and associated costs, are frequently used to find information that can lead to quality assessments of care or clinical research. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) extracted data on hospital readmissions following spine surgery at their institution from an administrative database to assess the clinical relevance of the information and to define clinically relevant predictors of readmission. What they found were ...

Graphene switches: HZB research group makes it to first base

2012-11-27

Now, Helmholtz Centre Berlin's Dr. Andrei Varykhalov, Prof. Dr. Oliver Rader and his team of physicists has taken the first step towards building graphene-based components, in collaboration with physicists from St. Petersburg (Russia), Jülich (Germany) and Harvard (USA). According to their report on 27. November 2012 in Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2227), they successfully managed to increase the graphene conduction electrons' spin-orbit coupling by a factor of 10,000 – enough to allow them to construct a switch that can be controlled via small electric fields. The ...

Protein injection points to muscular dystrophy treatment

2012-11-27

November 27, 2012 — Ottawa — Scientists have discovered that injecting a novel human protein into muscle affected by Duchenne muscular dystrophy significantly increases its size and strength, findings that could lead to a therapy akin to the use of insulin by diabetics. These results were published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Dr. Julia von Maltzahn and Dr. Michael Rudnicki, the Ottawa scientist who discovered muscle stem cells in adults. "This is an unprecedented and dramatic restoration in muscle strength," says Dr. Rudnicki, a senior ...

Study finds heavily indebted med students choosing primary care face greater financial challenges

2012-11-27

(Boston) - Researchers at Boston University and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) have determined that heavily indebted medical students choosing primary care careers will experience difficulty paying their student debt unless they consider alternative strategies to support repayment. These findings appear online in Academic Medicine, the peer-reviewed Journal of the AAMC. Most medical school graduates have education debt and the average amount of education debt is increasing. In 2011, 86 percent had education debt at graduation, averaging $161,290, ...

James' bond: A graphene/nanotube hybrid

2012-11-27

HOUSTON – (Nov. 27, 2012) – A seamless graphene/nanotube hybrid created at Rice University may be the best electrode interface material possible for many energy storage and electronics applications. Led by Rice chemist James Tour, researchers have successfully grown forests of carbon nanotubes that rise quickly from sheets of graphene to astounding lengths of up to 120 microns, according to a paper published today by Nature Communications. A house on an average plot with the same aspect ratio would rise into space. That translates into a massive amount of surface area, ...

GI researcher co-author of international permafrost report

2012-11-27

Fairbanks, Alaska—University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Vladimir Romanovsky is one of four scientists who authored a report released today by the United Nations Environmental Programme. The report, "Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost," seeks to highlight the potential hazards of carbon dioxide and methane emissions from warming permafrost, which have not thus far been included in climate-prediction modeling. The report notes that permafrost covers almost a quarter of the northern hemisphere and contains 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon—twice that currently in the ...

How devout are we? Study shows evangelicals surge as Catholics wane

2012-11-27

The percentage of Americans who say they are strong in their religious faith has been steady for the last four decades, a new study finds. But in that same time, the intensity of some religious groups has surged while others – notably Roman Catholics – has faded. Among the risers: Evangelicals, who have become more staunchly devout since the early 1990s. Meanwhile, Catholics now report the lowest proportion of strongly affiliated followers among major American religious traditions. The drop in intensity could present challenges for the Roman Catholic Church, the study ...

Ruling out deep vein thrombosis at the primary care level

2012-11-27

Algorithms improve certainty in ruling out deep and pelvic vein thrombosis at the primary level of patient care, say Lobna El Tabei and her co-authors in the current issue of the Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2012; 109[45]: 761-6). Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) can lead to fatal pulmonary embolism or chronic post-thrombotic syndrome. To improve differential diagnostic certainty, scores have been developed that allow the clinical probability of DVT to be calculated on the basis of weighted combinations of individual clinical findings. Items of these ...

Brief exercise immediately enhances memory, UCI study finds

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: