Apples for Health- Fitness increases size of brain structure

Fitness increases size of brain structure

PITTSBURGH, Feb. 25 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say elderly who are physically fit tend to have bigger hippocampi -- the part of the brain that deals with memory -- and better spatial memory.

The study, published in the journal Hippocampus, found that hippocampus size in physically fit adults accounts for about 40 percent of their advantage in spatial memory.

The hippocampus, a curved structure deep inside the medial temporal lobe of the brain, is essential to memory formation. Remove it -- as was done in the well-known Connecticut case of the late surgical patient Henry Gustav Molaison -- and a person's ability to store most new experiences in memory is destroyed.

In Molaison's case, he had brain surgery in 1953 after suffering a seizure. From that point on, he was unable to form memories and experienced everything in life for the first time each day until his death in December.

The hippocampus also is a key player in spatial navigation and other types of relational memory.

Researchers at the University of Illinois and University of Pittsburgh measured the cardiorespiratory fitness of 165 adults -- 109 of them female -- between ages 59 and 81. Using magnetic resonance imaging, they analyzed the volume of the subjects' left and right hippocampi. They also tested the participants' spatial reasoning.

They found a significant association between an individual's fitness and his or her performance on certain spatial memory tests. There was also a strong correlation between fitness and hippocampus size.