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Youngsters who are more physically fit have more fibrous little white-matter tracts within the brain than their less-fit counterparts, based on new research appearing in the August 19 edition from the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Iowa and Michigan State University recruited 24 9- and 10-year-old children, and then used a method known as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to investigate water diffusion in tissues in five of their brains’ white-matter tracts.
After controlling for several variables, including each youngster’s IQ and whether or not they have been diagnosed with learning disabilities, the researchers determined significant fitness-related variations in the integrity of countless white-matter tracts, such as the corpus callosum (which connects the brain’s right and left hemispheres) and also the superior longitudinal fasciculus (a set of structures that connect the frontal and parietal lobes).
“Previous studies suggest that children with higher levels of aerobic fitness show greater brain volumes in gray-matter brain regions important for memory and learning,” study author Laura Chaddock-Heyman, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois’s department of psychology, said in a statement Tuesday. “Now the very first time we explored how aerobic fitness pertains to white matter in children’s brains.”
While the research does not prove that health and fitness can in fact make children smarter, it will provide evidence to support that notion, said HealthDay News reporter Randy Dotinga. While previous research had discovered a connection between higher levels of fitness and improved attentiveness, memory and academic skills, Chaddock-Heyman and her colleagues set out to find out more about the outcome of exercise within the brains of young kids.
In accessory for variations in the corpus callosum and the superior longitudinal fasciculus, they also uncovered a link between fitness and also the superior corona radiata, which connect the cerebral cortex to the brain stem. The researchers explained that all three of these tracts have been found to influence memory and a focus.
“Previous studies in our lab have reported a relationship between fitness and white-matter integrity in seniors. Therefore, it seems that fitness might have benefits on white matter through the lifespan,” said co-author psychology professor and Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology director Arthur Kramer.
Chaddock-Heyman, Kramer as well as their colleagues are now looking to expand on their work, that is in the second year of the five-year randomized, controlled trial to find out whether white-matter tract integrity improves in kids who begin and maintain a brand new physical fitness routine. The researchers said that they’re searching for alterations in their subjects’ aerobic fitness levels, their brain structure and performance, as well as their genetic regulation.
“Prior work from your laboratories has revealed both short- and long-term variations in the relation of aerobic fitness to brain health insurance and cognition,” said University of Illinois kinesiology and community health professor Charles Hillman. “However, our current randomized, controlled trial should provide the most comprehensive assessment of this relationship to date.”
So do you know the overall implications of this research? Megan Herting, a postdoctoral fellow with the division of research on Children, Youth, and Families at Children’s Hospital of La, told Dotinga that it is hard to say at this time, because the research also revealed that kids with lower fitness levels also tended to weigh more.
“It is unclear if it’s actually fitness or ‘fatness’ which may be affecting the brain. Research has shown that folks with obesity have different brains when compared with their healthier-weight peers,” she said. “These findings do challenge that if you are aerobically fit, you’ll probably be dumb. Actually, from an evolutionary perspective, i was designed to move. So rather than fitness being ‘good’ for that brain and cognition, it is feasible that being sedentary may be ‘bad.'”
