Brain Endurance Training Boosts Brain and Body in Older Adults

Combining two tasks into one not only helps you do more at the same time, it could be the key to improving your brain and your body by a greater margin at the same time. Brain endurance training (BET), which is a combination of cognitive training and physical exercise that was developed for elite athletes, has been shown in a study from the University of Birmingham, UK to improve the physical and cognitive abilities of older adults better than exercise alone.

The research is the first of its kind to look at the benefits of BET for both cognitive performance and physical performance for older adults. Researchers were looking to see if BET could improve attention and executive function at the same time it increased physical endurance and resistance exercise performance.

The findings have important implications for healthy aging because previous studies have shown mental fatigue can disrupt cognitive and physical performance. Those impairments can lead to poorer balance control which can lead to an increase in the risk of falls and other accidents.

The results of the study were published in the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise.

"We have shown that BET could be an effective intervention to improve cognitive and physical performance in older adults, even when fatigued," said study author Professor Chris Ring. "This could have significant implications for improving health span in this population, including reducing the risk of falls and accidents."

The study included a group of 24 healthy, but sedentary, women between the ages of 65-78. They were divided into three groups: a BET group, an exercise-only group, and the control group which did no training.

The BET and exercise groups performed three 45-minute sessions per week over an eight-week period. The sessions included 20 minutes of resistance training and 25 minutes of endurance training. The sessions were the same for each group.

The BET cohort also completed a 20-minute cognitive task prior to their physical training.

All three groups completed a series of cognitive and physical tests before and at the end of the eight-week period. The BET participants outperformed the exercise-only group in terms of cognitive performance with an increase of 7.8 percent on post-study testing. The exercise group saw an increase of 4.5 percent.

When it comes to physical performance, the BET group also outperformed all with a 29.9 percent improvement. The exercise-only group saw a 22.4 percent improvement.

"BET is an effective countermeasure against mental fatigue and its detrimental effects on performance in older adults," added Professor Ring. "While we still need to extend our research to include larger sample sizes including both men and women, these promising initial findings show we should do more to encourage older people to engage in BET to improve brain and body activities."

Click here to read more in the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise.