As they get older, adults who never developed regular exercise habits face a conundrum: Just when they need the benefits of fitness more than ever – better balance, increased grip strength, higher cognitive function – it’s harder than ever to make it into a habit.
Bryan Montero Herrera, a second-year doctoral student at UNC Greensboro, tries to help with a little music. “Do you feel you are more mindful about exercise if you have music?” he asks. “Will you forget the work going into it?”
Music drives one of two studies he’s working on as a graduate research assistant in the Physical Activity and Cognition (PAC) Research Lab. Run by Dr. Jennifer Etnier, Julia Taylor Morton Distinguished Professor of Kinesiology, the PAC Lab aims to improve our understanding of the effects of exercise on cognitive performance.
With both studies, they hope to delay some of the most painful losses of aging – not just physical movement and coordination, but also memory and cognitive function. It’s especially meaningful to adults whose family histories puts them at risk.
Pick up the Pace
Music might distort the perception of time passing and distract from the strain of an unpopular task like exercise. Montero Herrera and the team put that theory to the test through the PAC Lab’s Inspiring Seniors Through Exercise Promotion (iSTEP) study.
They recruited 50 older adults who did not currently exercise regularly, which they divide into two groups. One group gets a music playlist with each song digitally altered to adjust tempo and emphasize certain beats.
Their expectation is that participants will naturally adjust their pace to match the rhythm.
“There is no distortion in the sound or lyrics,” says Chad Wessinger, another doctoral student working on iSTEP. “That emphasized beat is used for stepping in rhythm when walking. When you speed the tempo up, it might make them walk faster. That’s how we can build in progression.”
As the participants get stronger, the researchers provide playlists with a faster tempo. They watch if participants also speed up to keep pace, putting in more physical activity in the same period of time.
Montero Herrera says it can be applied to many different types of fitness: walking and jogging, balance exercises, and resistance training. “For example, when doing a frontal leg raise during resistance training, lift one leg up for two beats, then lower it down for two beats,” he says. All together, these round out the quality of life for aging adults, helping them keep up with grandchildren, avoid falls, and live independently.
They will wrap up the first phase in August. After they evaluate participant retention and satisfaction, they plan to repeat the exercise intervention program with more than double the participants.
Montero Herrera is excited to give more people a chance to feel those gains. “In the classes, we’re seeing how they are improving, able to work faster, getting up out of a chair faster,” he says. “It is opening doors in the community. They’re feeling that energy and happiness.”
Proteins and Precious Memories
Time takes on a different meaning in the PAC Lab’s study focused on individuals with a family history of Alzheimer’s disease. Whereas iSTEP might speed up the perception of time, PAAD2 wants to give more time, notably that time lost to Alzheimer’s disease.
This winter, they finished data collection for PAAD2, which is short for “Physical Activity and Alzheimer’s Disease 2,” a comprehensive follow-up to a previous study by Etnier.
With a grant from the National Institute for Health’s National Institute on Aging, they recruited adults 40-65 years old with family histories of Alzheimer’s. They complete cognitive testing throughout a yearlong exercise intervention. That includes the Stroop Test, which flashes words on a screen and requires them to select the correct color. These tests look at the link between executive function and memory, two important domains of cognitive function.
Nearly 7 million Americans have Alzheimer’s. While there is no known cure, they theorize that exercise could provide a cognitive boost to delay the symptoms. Specifically, they say it may stimulate proteins that protect brain tissue or help repair it.
Wessinger points to one protein called BDNF. He says, “We think that if that’s released in response to exercise, and we exercise consistently, then we’re going to have higher levels of BDNF that could result in some protective effects.”
Going the Extra Mile
Wessinger and Montero Herrera say there’s lots of potential as they unpack their findings. “We have enough data to contribute to publications for several years,” says Montero Herrera.
Wessinger recently presented an abstract at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference about nutrition and APOE ε4, a genetic marker for a greater risk of Alzheimer’s and symptoms starting at an earlier age. He found that people carrying the APOE ε4 allele aren’t seeing as many cognitive benefits from a quality diet as those who don’t carry it. That made him question whether the allele blocks the benefits.
The findings from PAAD2 will give him another avenue to explore. This summer, he’ll present another abstract using their assessments of grip strength and whether carriers see a benefit there.
Montero Herrera expects the PAC Lab will discover many more long-term gains. “There is a lot of information here that will be critical for people’s health in the future,” he says.
Story by Janet Imrick, University Communications
Photography courtesy of the Department of Kinesiology, School of Health and Human Sciences
