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.
00:30We had them do a session of 30 minutes of exercise on a stationary bicycle and on the
00:36other day they didn't exercise during that 30 minutes.
00:40Immediately afterwards we had them get into an MRI scanner and during that MRI scan we
00:45had them look at names that were on a screen.
00:57We designed it to be very easy, but we were looking at the brain activation that was then
01:02evidenced as they were remembering the famous and not famous names in this semantic memory
01:07system.
01:29When we tested people after 12 weeks on a day when they hadn't been doing any exercise,
01:34we found that before and after training, when their fitness was improved, their brain
01:39activation was less and we interpreted that as being an efficiency of the brain systems.
01:54Having more activation in the brain wasn't what we necessarily expected.
01:57We found that the certain areas of the brain that are involved in semantic memory increased
02:03their activation.
02:04Not all of them, but a few did.
02:06One importantly is the hippocampus of the brain increased its activation, which we know
02:10is very important for memory and is important for the long-term maintenance of memory because
02:17it's attacked early 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
02:45in whether or not exercise training could protect those individuals who are most at
02:49risk.
02:50It really points to the importance of being physically active consistently and all the
02:54time, but doing just a little bit of exercise and being a little bit active, even if it's
02:59just walking a few days a week, really reduces your risk substantially.
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