00:00Being sedentary is very bad for you and it puts you at extreme risk for many diseases.
00:17So our study was designed to look at how a single session of exercise affects memory
00:22networks and we recruited older adults who were physically active and healthy and had
00:27them come to our laboratory on two different days. We had them do a session of 30 minutes
00:33of exercise on a stationary bicycle and on the other day they didn't exercise during
00:39that 30 minutes. Immediately afterwards we had them get into an MRI scanner
00:44and during that MRI scan we had them look at names that were on a screen.
00:49We designed it to be very easy but we were looking at the brain activation that was
00:54then evidenced as they were remembering the famous and not famous names in this
00:59semantic memory system.
01:19So when we tested people after 12 weeks on a day when they hadn't been doing any exercise we found
01:34that before to after training when their fitness was improved that their brain activation was less
01:40and we interpreted that as being an efficiency of the brain systems.
01:49So having more activation in the brain wasn't what we necessarily expected. We found that
01:59the certain areas of the brain that are involved in semantic memory increased their activation.
02:04Not all of them but a few did and one importantly is the hippocampus of the brain
02:09increased its activation which we know is very important for memory and is important for the
02:15long-term maintenance of memory because it's attacked
02:18early in the stages of Alzheimer's disease when people lose memory ability.
02:40There's a family history risk that comes along with Alzheimer's disease and we're interested in
02:45whether or not exercise training could protect those individuals who are most at risk. It really
02:50points to the importance of being physically active consistently and all the time but doing
02:55just a little bit of exercise and being a little bit active even if it's just walking a few days a
03:00week really reduces your risk substantially.
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