The efficiency of aerobic exercise on neuropsychological functions in Alzheimer’s patients

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Graduated from Islamic Azad University Central Tehran branch

Abstract

Alzheimer's is one of the most prevalent neurodegenerative and progressive disorders in which is followed by cognitive impairment. This research was performed to study the effect of aerobic exercise on the Alzheimer’s patients’ neuropsychological functions. In a quasi-experimental study with the control group, fourteen Alzheimer’s patients of Alzheimer’s Association were selected by the convenience sampling. Before the intervention, the severity of their disease was assessed by FAST (Mohammadian, et al, 2015) and MMSE (Saidyan, et al, 2007) and the degree of hippocampal atrophy was recorded by brain MRI. They were randomly assigned into two groups of seven.  Both groups were assessed by MOCA (Sigaroodi, et al, 2012) and MMSE in the pretest and posttest stages. The experimental group participated in a 3-month physical exercise program using a stationary bicycle. This program was run twice a week and each session was 45 minutes. The control group did not receive any intervention. The results of the analysis of covariance showed that the neuropsychological function scores in the posttest of the Alzheimer’s patients in the experimental group were significantly higher than that of the control group.

Keywords

References

Ahlskog J.E., Geda. Y. E, ;Graff-Radford . N. R; Petersen. R.C.(2011).Physical exercise as a preventive or disease- modifying treatment of dementia and brain aging .Mayo clin proc.86.
 Amini, M. Dolatshahi, B. Dadkhah, A. Lotfi, M. (2010). The effect of cognitive rehabilitation to reduce cognitive impairment in elderly patients with Alzheimer's dementia. Journal of elderly.15(5):78-86 (in Persian).
 Antunes. H. K, De Mello. M. T, Santos-Galduroz. R.F, Galduroz . J.C.F, Aquino Lemos .V, Bueno.O.F.A. (2015). Effects of a physical fitness program on memory and blood viscosity in sedentary elderly men. Brazilian journal of medical and Biological Research.48(9):805-812.
 Aras S, Tek l, Varli M, Yalcin A, Cengiz Ok, Atmis V. (2013). plasma viscosity: is a biomarker for differential diagnosis of Alzheimer s disease and vascular dementia? Am j Alzheimer’s Dis Other Demon, 28:62-68.
 Barnes, Jill N. (2014). Exercise , cognitive function , and aging , Adv. Physical Educ39:55-62.
 Chapman. S.B, Aslan.S, Spence .J.S, Defina .L.F, Keebler.M.W,Didehbani.N ,Hanzhang .Lu.(2013).Shorter term aerobic exercise improves brain , cognition , and cardiovascular fitness in aging. Frontiers in aging Neuroscience.75.
 Dadfar, F, Dadfar, M, Ashayeri, H, Atefvahid, M, Kazemi, H, Kolivand, P. (2014). Alzheimer dementia Biological and neuropsychological aspects. Tehran: Mirmah Publisher .
 Duzel , Emrah , Praag , Henriette van , Sendtner , Michael . (2016) . Can physical exercise in old age improve memory and hippocampal function? A Journal of neurology. 139: 662- 673.
 Mohammadian, F, Noroozian, M, Nafissi, Sh, Fatehi, F. (2015). Blink reflex may help discriminate Alzheimer disease from vascular dementia. Journal of clinical neurophysiology. 32(6): 505-511
Saidyan, M. Fallah, M. Noroozian, M. Nejat, S. Delavar, A. Gasemzadeh, H. (2007). Prepare and validate the Persian version of the Mini-Mental State Examination. Journal of Medical Council of Islamic Republic of Iran. 25(4), 408-414. ( in Persian).
Samandari, S.(2014). Geriatric Psychiatry. Tehran: Arya Publisher.
Sigaroodi, H , Majidi, A , Samadi, S, Shirzad, H, Agam, H, Azimikia, A, Mohammad bakhsh, L.(2012). Montreal consistent cognitive test and neurologist diagnosed in patients with cognitive impairment. Tehran: Journal of Police Medicine. (1),12-17. (in Persian).
Winchester. J , Dick . M.B , Gillen . D , Reed. B , Miller . B , Tinklenberg . J , Mungas .D , Chui . H , Galasko. D , Hewett . L , Cotman . C.W. (2013). Walking stabilizes cognitive functioning in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) across one year . Archives Gerontology and Geriatrics 56: 96-103.
Yousefi, M. Raisi, P. Alayi, H, Pilehvaran, A. (2011). The effect of exercise (running on a treadmill) on learning and memory after STZ injection into the lateral ventricles of the brain. Esfahan:151(29), 1083-1090.(in persian).
Journal of Applied Psychological Research
Volume 7, Issue 4
March 2017
Pages 151-162

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 15 November 2016
  • Revise Date: 06 April 2017
  • Accept Date: 31 December 2016
  • First Publish Date: 20 January 2017
  • Publish Date: 20 January 2017

Share

How to cite

Statistics