UMD Study Finds Brain Connectivity, Memory Improves in Adults After Walking | Hacker News Reader

UMD Study Finds Brain Connectivity, Memory Improves in Adults After Walking

sph.umd.edu

93 pointsborissk21 comments

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-...

> 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.

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.

>> 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.

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.

wow flagged

how common is garbage science like that? is this what is expected from UMD?

I can only speak to fMRI, but this is very common. I would say that the majority of fMRI studies add zero or negative value to the literature. They are expensive to do, and difficult to do well, so there is enormous pressure to turn bad data into papers.

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Longer walks are hands down better: https://caloriesproper.com/the-power-of-a-good-walk/

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.

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.

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.

Results add to growing evidence that exercise slows cognitive impairment and may delay onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

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!"

Walking is underrated.

Having said that, theres no point talking about a study until it’s been replicated.

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