Elsevier

Neurobiology of Aging

Volume 33, Issue 3, March 2012, Pages 620.e9-620.e22
Neurobiology of Aging

Abstract of online article
Spatial navigation training protects the hippocampus against age-related changes during early and late adulthood

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2011.02.013Get rights and content
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Abstract

It is unknown whether lifestyle, including mental stimulation, and appropriate training interventions, may directly improve spatial navigation performance and its underlying neural substrates. Here we report that healthy younger and older men performing a cognitively demanding spatial navigation task every other day over 4 months display navigation-related gains in performance and stable hippocampal volumes that were maintained 4 months after termination of training. In contrast, control groups displayed volume decrements consistent with longitudinal estimates of age-related decline. Hippocampal barrier density, as indicated by mean diffusivity estimated from diffusion tensor imaging, showed a quadratic shape of increased density after training followed by a return to baseline in the right hippocampus, but declined in the control groups and in the left hippocampus. We conclude that sustained experiential demands on spatial ability protect hippocampal integrity against age-related decline. These results provide the first longitudinal evidence indicating that spatial navigation experience modifies hippocampal volumes in humans, and confirm epidemiological results suggesting that mental stimulation may have direct effects on neural integrity.

Keywords

Cognitive aging
Cognitive training
Hippocampus
Plasticity
Spatial navigation

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