Running could help avoid memory loss, study finds

Marathon runners can get a bad rap from people who don’t understand the purpose of putting your body through months of training to compete in a physically taxing, 26.2-mile ordeal only to finish with cramped muscles, toe blisters and a measly medal to show for it.

But a new study shows that endurance running may be changing athlete’s brains and promoting more advanced connections in their cognitive function, which could provide benefits across a person’s life.

“Although generally considered an automated repetitive task, locomotion, especially at an elite level, likely engages multiple cognitive actions including planning, inhibition, monitoring, attentional switching and multi-tasking, and motor control,” the study found. “We also found evidence that patterns may be driven by time spent in intense aerobic activity. In all of the patterns described above, connectivity strength (both positive and negative) was highly correlated with measures of aerobic fitness and self-reported physical activity.”

The study, published in Frontier in Human Neuroscience, examined 11 competitive male college runners and 11 men of the same age who had not exercised over the past year. Researchers at the University of Arizona determined their aerobic fitness before examining their brains as they laid in an MRI machine for six minutes.

The brains of the runners showed more connections in parts of the organ associated with higher-level thinking. They also demonstrated less activity in parts of the brain associated with mind wandering and distraction. This evidence indicates the brains of runners are better able to deal with many topics at once.

More research is needed to determine if the results are found in endurance athletes in other sports, like biking or swimming, and if the findings hold among women and people of all ages.

“High intensity aerobic activity that requires sustained, repetitive locomotor and navigational skills may stress cognitive domains in ways that lead to altered brain connectivity, which in turn has implications for understanding the beneficial role of exercise for brain and cognitive function over the lifespan,” the study found.

That means running could help people combat memory loss and maintain brain function as they age.

“Lifelong physical activity may be an important element of successful aging and strengthened resting state connectivity could reflect a mechanism for the protective effects of physical activity,” the study found.

This story was originally published December 15, 2016 at 7:00 PM with the headline "Running could help avoid memory loss, study finds."