Cited by 508Dementia and Cognitive Impairment ResearchPhysical Activity and HealthAging and Gerontology Research

Physical activity predicts gray matter volume in late adulthood: The Cardiovascular Health Study

Open access
Erickson, K.I., Raji, C.A., Lopez, O.L., Becker, J.T., Rosano, C., Newman, A.B., Gach, H.M., Thompson, P.M. +2 more·2010·Neurology

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: Physical activity (PA) has been hypothesized to spare gray matter volume in late adulthood, but longitudinal data testing an association has been lacking. Here we tested whether PA would be associated with greater gray matter volume after a 9-year follow-up, a threshold could be identified for the amount of walking necessary to spare gray matter volume, and greater gray matter volume associated with PA would be associated with a reduced risk for cognitive impairment 13 years after the PA evaluation. METHODS: In 299 adults (mean age 78 years) from the Cardiovascular Health Cognition Study, we examined the association between gray matter volume, PA, and cognitive impairment. Physical activity was quantified as the number of blocks walked over 1 week. High-resolution brain scans were acquired 9 years after the PA assessment on cognitively normal adults. White matter hyperintensities, ventricular grade, and other health variables at baseline were used as covariates. Clinical adjudication for cognitive impairment occurred 13 years after baseline. RESULTS: Walking amounts ranged from 0 to 300 blocks (mean 56.3; SD 69.7). Greater PA predicted greater volumes of frontal, occipital, entorhinal, and hippocampal regions 9 years later. Walking 72 blocks was necessary to detect increased gray matter volume but walking more than 72 blocks did not spare additional volume. Greater gray matter volume with PA reduced the risk for cognitive impairment 2-fold. CONCLUSION: Greater amounts of walking are associated with greater gray matter volume, which is in turn associated with a reduced risk of cognitive impairment.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1212/wnl.0b013e3181f88359

Cites

39 of 39 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • In older adults, aerobic exercise was associated with improved performances in spatial memory tasks.

    “Some human studies have focussed on assessing the influence of AE on hippocampus dependent cognition and shown in older adults that AE was associated with improved performances in both episodic (Richards et al., 2003; Stewart et al., 2003; Sabia et al., 2009; Flöel et al., 2010; Ruscheweyh et al., 2011) and spatial (Erickson and Kramer, 2009; Erickson et al., 2010, 2011) memory tasks as well as in”

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. Dr. Newman serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Gerontology Medical Sciences and receives research support from the NIH (R01-AG-029824 [PI], U01-AG-022376
  2. Dr. Gach receives re- search support from the US Department of Defense and the NIH (R01 AG20098 [co-I]). Dr. Thompson serves on editorial advisory boards for IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, Human Brain Mapping, Medical Image Analysis, Cerebral Cortex, Current Medical Imaging Reviews, Inverse Problems and Imaging, and Translational Neuroscience; and receives re- search support from the NIH (R01 EB008432 [PI], NIBIB R01 EB008281
  3. Siscovick DS, Fried LP, Mittelmark M, et al. Exercise in- tensity and subclinical cardiovascular disease in the elderly. Am J Epidemiol 1997;145:977-986.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Erickson, K. I., Raji, C. A., Lopez, O. L., Becker, J. T., Rosano, C., Newman, A. B., Gach, H. M., Thompson, P. M., Ho, A. J., & Kuller, L. H.
Affiliations
  • University of Nevada, Las Vegas (US)
  • From the Departments of Psychology (K.I.E., J.T.B.), Pathology (C.A.R.), Radiology (C.A.R., H.M.G.), Neurology (O.L.L., J.T.B.), and Epidemiology (C.R., A.B.N., L.H.K.), and Western Psychiatric Institute (J.T.B.), University of Pittsburgh, PA; Nevada Cancer Institute (H.M.G.), University of Nevada, Las Vegas; and Department of Neurology (P.M.T., A.J.H.), University of California, Los Angeles.
Venue
Neurology
Published
2010-10-19
Volume
75
Issue
16
Pages
1415-1422
ISSN
  • 0028-3878 (ISSN-L)
  • 1526-632X
OpenAlex
W2164037272
Cited by
508
References
39
Citations by year
2026: 17 · 2025: 26 · 2024: 26 · 2023: 23 · 2022: 26 · 2021: 34 · 2020: 34 · 2019: 36 · 2018: 32 · 2017: 31 · 2016: 34 · 2015: 52 · 2014: 44 · 2013: 28 · 2012: 33
FWCI
20.12
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Neurology (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
  • American Heart Association (0815465D)
  • University of Pittsburgh (P30-AG024827)
  • National Institutes of Health (n01hc085082-026, n01hc085081-021, n01hc045133-001, n01hc085079-024, n01hc015103-009, n01hc085084-005, n01hc085085-011, n01hc085083-027, n01hc085080-026, n01hc085086-022, n01hc55222-0-0-0, n01hc075150-004, n01hc035129-010)
  • National Institute on Aging (N01HC85079, N01 HC‐15103, AG 20098, AG-15928, P50AG005133, N01HC55222, N01‐HC‐35129, N01-HC-75150, R01AG020098, R01-AG-15928, R01 AG20098, AG023629, AG027058, HL080295, 024827, N01‐HC‐45133, N01‐HC‐85086, R01AG015928, R01AG027058, P30AG024827)
  • National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (N01-HC-85081, N01HC85085, AG-023629, N01HC-85083, AG-027058, N01HC15103, N01HC85082, N01HC‐75150, N01 HC85086, AG-20098, HL-075366, N01HC85080, N01 HC55222, R01HL075366, N01‐HC‐45133, U01HL080295, AG-15928, N01-HC-85079 through N01-HC-85086, HL080295, N01-HC85079, ­N01-HC85084, N01HC35129)
  • National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (AG023629, AG‐15928, AG‐027058, AG‐20098, N01-HC-75150, HL080295, N01-HC-35129, N01-HC-45133, N01-HC-85086, N01 HC-55222, N01HC85079, N01-HC-15103)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Physical Activity and Health
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology › Aging and Gerontology Research
Keywords
physical activity, walking, gray matter volume, old age, cognitive impairment, hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, brain aging, white matter hyperintensities, ventriculomegaly, threshold effects
MeSH terms
Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Brain, Brain Mapping, Cardiovascular Diseases, Cognition Disorders, Female, Humans, Longitudinal Studies, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Mental Status Schedule, Motor Activity, Neuropsychological Tests, Predictive Value of Tests, Surveys and Questionnaires, Odds Ratio

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review