You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Editorial
Exercise as medicine for the brain: moving towards precise and personalised recommendations
  1. Patricio Solis-Urra1,2,
  2. Beatriz Fernandez-Gamez1,
  3. Teresa Liu-Ambrose3,4,5,
  4. Kirk I Erickson6,7,
  5. Francisco B Ortega1,8,9,
  6. Irene Esteban-Cornejo1,8,10
  1. 1 Department of Physical Education and Sports, Faculty of Sport Sciences, Sport and Health University Research Institute (iMUDS), University of Granada, Granada, Spain
  2. 2 Faculty of Education and Social Sciences, Universidad Andres Bello, Viña del Mar, Chile
  3. 3 Centre for Aging SMART at Vancouver Coastal Health, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
  4. 4 Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
  5. 5 Aging, Mobility, and Cognitive Health Laboratory, Department of Physical Therapy, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
  6. 6 Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
  7. 7 AdventHealth Research Institute, Neuroscience, Orlando, FL, USA
  8. 8 Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red Fisiopatología de la Obesidad y Nutrición (CIBERobn), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain
  9. 9 Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
  10. 10 ibs.GRANADA Instituto de Investigación Biosanitaria, Granada, Spain
  1. Correspondence to Dr Patricio Solis-Urra, Department of Physical Education and Sports, Faculty of Sport Sciences, Sport and Health University Research Institute (iMUDS), University of Granada, Granada, Spain; patricio.solis.u{at}gmail.com; Dr Irene Esteban-Cornejo, Department of Physical Education and Sports, Faculty of Sport Sciences, Sport and Health University Research Institute (iMUDS), University of Granada, Granada, Spain; ireneesteban{at}ugr.es

https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2024-108158

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Exercise promotes brain health. Human and animal studies have demonstrated acute and chronic effects of exercise on brain and cognitive function.1–3 Exercise is not a magic bullet solution to every brain and health condition, but it is one of the most promising and scalable approaches to improve and maintain brain health throughout the lifespan. The purpose of this editorial is to highlight research needs in the field of exercise neuroscience with the aim to clarify the individual variability in response to exercise and to improve precision in using exercise as medicine for brain health.

    Exercise for brain health across the lifespan

    The benefit of exercise interventions on brain health is evident for different age groups and populations.3 For childhood and adolescence, exercise in school settings is critical given its broad access to the population and its potential to promote healthy brain development and enhance academic achievement.4 In adulthood, few studies show benefits in the maintenance or improvement of cognitive function.3 Nevertheless, further research is essential to optimise these advantages, aiming to enhance cognitive reserve and safeguard cognitive health in later stages of life. Finally, in late adulthood exercise demonstrates benefits across various aspects of brain health affected by ageing. The clinical emphasis should be on personalised recommendations to maximise these benefits.5 The vast amount of evidence is focused on aerobic exercise,3 but other …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • X @Patricio__Solis, @Beatrizfg8, @UBC_CogMobLab, @ortegaporcel, @estebancornejoi

    • Contributors PSU wrote the first draft and PS-U, BF-G and IE-C developed the concept for the manuscript. All authors performed subsequent revisions and approved the final version of the manuscript.

    • Funding PS-U is supported by the grant PID2022-137399OB-I00 funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. BF-G is supported by the grant PID2022-137399OB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and FSE+. FBO’s research activity is supported by the grant PID2020-120249RB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by the Andalusian Government (Junta de Andalucía, Plan Andaluz de Investigación, ref. P20_00124). IE-C is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (RTI2018-095284-J-100) and the Ministry of Science and Innovation (RyC2019-027287-1 and PID2022-137399OB-I00).

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.