USA: Old Age, Old Brain? Maybe Not

. NEW YORK, NY / Newsweek / February 25, 2009 By Sharon Begley There is more than enough evidence that physical exercise is good for the brain, bringing benefits like lower cholesterol and blood pressure, but here’s more: it can increase the size of your hippocampus, the structure responsible for the formation and storage of new memories as well as for spatial navigation--finding your way around. In a paper to be published in the journal Hippocampus, scientists report that elderly people who are physically fit generally have a larger hippocampus and better spatial memory than peers who are less fit. Previous studies have shown that challenging the hippocampus—exercising its spatial skills and its memory abilities—can increase its volume, too. London cabbies have bigger ones than your average Londoner, and experienced cabbies have larger ones than newbies, suggesting that making the hippocampus find its way through London’s labyrinth can boost its size. And exercising its memory-making skills seems to do the same thing: a study of German medical students found that the hippocampus got larger as they studied for finals. This is the first study, however, to show that plain old physical exercise, which does not engage the hippocampus to any real extent, can also give it a boost. The scientists, led by Art Kramer of the University of Illinois and Kirk Erickson of the University of Pittsburgh, studied 165 adults, ages 59 to 81..... Click to continue reading © 2009 Newsweek, Inc.