Exercise and mindfulness training did not improve older people’s brain health in a surprising new study published [recently] in JAMA. The experiment, which enrolled more than 580 older men and women, looked into whether starting a program of exercise, mindfulness — or both — enhanced older people’s abilities to think and remember or altered the structure of their brains.
“We thought we would find gains from exercise and also from mindfulness and especially from a combination of the two,” said Eric Lenze, the head of the department of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who led the new study.
“We did not.”
The results seem to call into question the ability of exercise and other lifestyle changes to fight cognitive decline with aging. But they also raise new questions about whether we really understand enough about the brain and mind — or how to study them — to know if we are changing them when we walk or meditate.
So, do the results indicate working out and mindfulness are pointless for brain health?
“I think this study tells us we don’t know nearly as much about the brain as we think we do,” Lenze said.
Exercise and mindfulness did not improve certain cognitive tasks in this study, he said, but perhaps they would aid other types of thinking or maybe their effects would differ in people with greater or lesser existing memory concerns.
