BOSTON – A prescription for exercise may do more than boost obese children's physical health. It also may improve how they think, results of a study have shown.
The findings are consistent with recent work demonstrating exercise-induced improvements in cognition in older adults and add fuel to the argument for increasing physical education requirements in schools and community-based opportunities for physical activity, according to Mathew Gregoski of the Georgia Prevention Institute of the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta.
As part of an ongoing investigation of a possible dose-response relationship between a 3-month exercise program and adiposity, insulin sensitivity, and executive functioning in overweight youth, 30 children aged 8–11 years with a body mass index at or above the 85th percentile for their age and gender were randomized to one of three intervention conditions–no exercise, low-dose exercise (20 min/day), and high-dose exercise (40 min/day)–to test the effect of aerobic exercise training on cognitive measures.
Both of the exercise conditions included vigorous aerobic activities and games that maintained average heart rate above 150 beats per minute, Mr. Gregoski reported at the annual meeting of the Society for Behavioral Medicine.
Before and after the interventions, all participants underwent standardized mental functioning testing using the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS). The investigators calculated the changes from baseline in four scales of the CAS, including planning, attention, successive, and simultaneous, said Mr. Gregoski, who conducted the investigation under the direction of Catherine Davis, Ph.D.
The planning scale measures an individual's ability to generate and implement hypotheses and to use decision-making structures to evaluate them.
This aspect of mental functioning is thought to underlie cognitive control, intentionality, and self-regulation–all of which have been identified as challenges for obese children.
The attention scale measures an individual's ability to focus attention, take in information, and maintain sufficient alertness to attempt problem solving.
The successive scale is associated with the ability to integrate information in serial order, and the simultaneous scale is associated with mental operations that require consideration of all elements of a complex stimulus concurrently.
Analysis of variance revealed significant improvement following both exercise interventions in the planning scale of the CAS, with the high-dose exercise group experiencing the most change from baseline. The other cognitive measures did not show an effect, Mr. Gregoski said.
That a significant cognitive benefit was observed with the 20-minute intervention in addition to the longer duration is notable in that such a program could readily be introduced during regular physical education sessions, he said at the conference.
These results “provide evidence for a direct relationship between physical activity and children's cognitive development,” Mr. Gregoski said.
The findings may be important not only for developing interventions targeting this population, but also for breaking down the barriers to physical education and activity in schools.