Walking may preserve activity in some brain regions
In a randomized crossover trial, 30 minutes of moderate walking versus sitting brought no measurable task benefits for 17 young and 19 older healthy adults.
Limit: Postexercise blood flow changes can alter BOLD signals independently of neural activity
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
Seventeen healthy young adults averaging 25 years and 19 healthy older adults averaging 62 years, including 18 women, took part in a randomized crossover trial. The trial compared walking and sitting on separate days. Walking included a five-minute warm-up and 30 minutes at moderate intensity. Brain scans tracked blood-oxygen changes as participants switched between judging shapes and colors, before and about 15 and 45 minutes after each session.
In both age groups, activity in some brain regions stayed stable after walking but fell after sitting. Walking produced no measurable improvement in task performance. Repeating the task reduced activity in several regions in both groups. Only older adults reduced the extra response time needed to switch tasks. Lower activity with repetition was linked to faster responses, particularly in older adults.
Why it matters
Flexible thinking lets people adjust to changing task demands. This study addressed whether exercise and practice affect the brain activity supporting that ability differently in young and older adults.
Caveats
Blood-oxygen signals are an indirect measure of brain activity, and testing extended only to about 45 minutes after each session. This small trial’s older group excluded people with hypertension, diabetes, dementia or other neurological or psychiatric disorders.
From the paper
- Who took part
Seventeen healthy young adults (8 women; 25 ± 2 years) and 19 older adults (10 women; 62 ± 5 years) participated in the study.
- Duration
In the exercise condition, participants walked < 3 min to an exercise physiology laboratory in the same building as the MRI room and performed 35 min of treadmill walking (5‐min warm‐up +30‐min moderate‐intensity walking).
- Limitation
First, we employed only a single task switching paradigm to assess cognitive flexibility.
- Executive function
After adjustment for pre‐intervention values, LMM analyses indicated no significant condition × time or age × condition × time interactions for switch cost performance (p ≥ 0.365).
- Task-related BOLD activation
Across both age groups, task repetition significantly decreased BOLD activation related to switch cost.
- Task-related BOLD activation
LMM with adjustment for pre‐intervention values confirmed that walking maintained higher activation in the right postcentral gyrus compared with sitting at both post 1 and post 2 (d = 0.535; Figure ).
Quoted word for word from the full text on PubMed Central.
The paper
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology; University of Tsukuba
Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Jun 10, 2026, Open access
