[HN Gopher] UMD Study Finds Brain Connectivity, Memory Improves ...
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UMD Study Finds Brain Connectivity, Memory Improves in Adults After
Walking
Author : borissk
Score : 73 points
Date : 2023-05-28 08:25 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sph.umd.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (sph.umd.edu)
| realjohng wrote:
| Walking is underrated.
|
| Having said that, theres no point talking about a study until
| it's been replicated.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| I'm 39, and the difference in my cognition prior to taking
| serious care of my health (which also includes daily walks) and
| after is palpable.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Utterly useless. There's no control group, and they repeated the
| memory test. Anyone will get better on the second time taking
| that test.
|
| The fMRI correlations with memory improvement are between a very
| limited subset of the brain regions and the test results. These
| would very likely disappear if they properly controlled for
| multiple comparisons.
| smegsicle wrote:
| wow flagged
|
| how common is garbage science like that? is this what is
| expected from UMD?
| progrus wrote:
| The most OP turbo-thinker who I can name, Immanuel Kant, had such
| a regular walking habit that you could set your watch when you
| saw him cross the town square.
| qwertox wrote:
| I would like to know if listening to podcasts or audiobooks is
| counterproductive.
|
| There's a difference between thinking about self-generated
| thoughts vs. "thinking" about a podcast episode. Basically, with
| a podcast you don't even get much time to really think about it
| while you're listening to it.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| I've found it beneficial to take breaks from listening to
| things on my earbuds during my walks. At first you feel weird
| (I'd call myself a self-professed spoken word addict), but then
| your own thought process takes the driver's seat and it's
| magnificent.
|
| Another funny side effect from listening to audiobooks on my
| walks is that when I visit the same places again, the things
| I've listened to while walking there spring to mind with a very
| good recall. And vice versa, listening to an audiobook brings
| very vivid memories of places walked when listening prior to
| that.
|
| I'd say listening while walking is very productive.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Purely anecdotal, yesterday I went to a conference and this
| morning I chatted with my wife, telling her what I listened to.
|
| I had to walk/run (went with public transit).
|
| This morning as I was telling my wife the details of what I did I
| told her "how am I remembering all these details!"
| ccooffee wrote:
| From the study[0][1-pdf], the exercise routine was walking on a
| treadmill with adjustable gradient. The objective was to keep
| participants in the 50-60% heart rate range for 30 minutes, which
| was done by altering the gradient and speed. Including the 10
| minutes warm-up and 10 minutes cool-down, this gave 4x weekly
| workouts of 50 minutes to the mostly 75+ year old patients.
|
| Given that the participants were screened to be low-exercise
| individuals beforehand, this gives some evidence that "exercise
| more" is a reasonable treatment for low-activity seniors
| experiencing cognitive decline.
|
| Because it stood out as weird to me, I want to remark that the
| study's participation requirements explicitly filtered out
| depressed patients, day-to-day impaired patients, and anyone
| left-handed (???).
|
| [0] https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-
| alzheimers-... [1-pdf]
| https://content.iospress.com/download/journal-of-alzheimers-...
| kadoban wrote:
| > Because it stood out as weird to me, I want to remark that
| the study's participation requirements explicitly filtered out
| depressed patients, day-to-day impaired patients, and anyone
| left-handed (???).
|
| Maybe they had an abandoned or separately condsidered for
| publishing test where they had people manipulate _something_,
| and it mattered which side it was on? Does seem weird though.
| itronitron wrote:
| >> the exercise routine was walking on a treadmill with
| adjustable gradient
|
| That's unfortunate as the best part of a walk is getting out
| and seeing the neighborhood.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Some left-handed people have their brains reversed, so that
| language is on the right side. To avoid that as a potential
| complication, fMRI studies often exclude lefties.
| chkaloon wrote:
| I don't doubt that walking and exercise are helpful. I do have
| issues with the conclusions of this study, however. Sure the
| participants walked, but they also repeated tests. I didn't see
| any mention of controls.
| gardenfelder wrote:
| Results add to growing evidence that exercise slows cognitive
| impairment and may delay onset of Alzheimer's disease.
| mikece wrote:
| I was hoping there would be some info in that article about
| whether having the habit of regular walks younger in life wards
| off the accruing effects of memory impairment and what the
| "minimum effective dose" is. More to the point: is going for a
| five minute walk twice an hour (and the end of pomodoros)
| sufficient or does it require a 30 to 60 minute walk?
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Every study I have seen either requires a longer duration of
| 20-30 minutes or a set of very intense but short intervals for
| the same effect. The protocol in this study treated the walking
| as an exercise routine with a warmup and cooldown period. They
| only used 70-80 year olds in this particular study so one
| likely has to rely on overviews like this
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5440589/ since a
| longitudinal study with as much data gathering as this UMD
| study might be kind of expensive and intrusive on study
| participants.
|
| You either should exercise because you want to or not, I don't
| think any single study is going to convince anyone if they do
| not want to. Based on my rudimentary understanding of
| physiology and aging, one would want to because one's _ability_
| to exercise steadily declines after about age 35 unless one
| exercises regularly.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Longer walks are hands down better:
| https://caloriesproper.com/the-power-of-a-good-walk/
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I use the excuse of going for coffee to get out of the office
| regularly and just walk. I probably would have smoked in an
| earlier age, with fewer coffee houses around.
|
| I feel unable to think or code if I don't get some oxygen going
| to the brain and stuck in one mode and walking helps break out of
| bad modes and gives me new ways to tackle a problem.
|
| It's also very social, at least it used to be before we all
| stopped being in same place at the same time
| dpflan wrote:
| Excellent. Yes, exercise is good for your body and mind. Articles
| like this hit the front page with a regular frequency, and the
| conclusions seem to boil down to: do some exercises regularly,
| and walking is the most obvious, built-in exercise humans can do.
| So go get some steps in!
| namaria wrote:
| We've evolved to be rangers, pathfinders, hunters, surveyors.
| Spending all day in a concrete box is certainly a way to make us
| sad. And being out and about navigating is the cure.
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(page generated 2023-05-28 23:01 UTC)