Exercise 'can reverse memory loss'

Aerobic exercise can expand the brain and restore powers of memory lost with age, research has shown.

One year of moderate exercise was found to increase the size of the hippocampus – a part of the brain vital to memory and learning – in a group of older adults.

Participants showed an improvement in spatial memory function.

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This is the kind of memory that helps us remember how to get to a certain place, or where we have left the house keys. Loss of spatial memory often becomes a problem in old age.

Scientists in the US recruited 120 dementia-free sedentary people aged 55 to 80. Half were asked to start an aerobic exercise regime that involved walking around a track for 40 minutes a day, three days a week. The rest were taught stretching and toning, but had no aerobic exercise.

After a year, the aerobic exercise group showed an increase in the volume of the hippocampus of 2.12 per cent and 1.97 per cent, respectively. In those who did stretching exercises, the same regions of the brain had decreased in volume by 1.40 per cent and 1.43 per cent.

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