The mice who ran performed much better on several tasks that required that they tell the difference between two visual patterns.The effect of running was very clear in adult mice. In mice who were very old, though, running didn’t make much difference, and they didn’t get much boost from the exercise.

John Grohol at PsychCentral also posted about the article, noting that some newspaper accounts barely mentioned the fact that the study was done with mice. He even points out that it was done with a specific variety of mice, and suggests that the relevance of the study may be limited. It’s true that it is very hard to know whether studies about mice really mean much for humans, since findings in animals often don’t generalize to humans.

As Grohol notes, the research is pretty clear that exercise can improve cognitive functioning in people as well as animals.But I’m not as concerned as he is that the results of this study will only apply to one strain of mice. Animal research has its problems when we apply it to human research, but in this case studies in humans have consistently shown similar results to those in animals. It may still be true that the reasons for changes in cognitive function in humans and animals may be different, but that means we would have to come up with two separate mechanisms for change. That’s actually making the situation more, rather than less, complex.

Dr Grohol makes an excellent point about human and animal research. Too often, we jump from preliminary findings to the real world. In areas in which animal and human studies generally agree,though, animals studies can extend and help find new directions for research at considerably less cost than similar studies in humans.

Reference:

Creer DJ et al. Running enhances spatial pattern separation in mice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published online first January 19,2010 doi:10.1073/pnas.0911725107

The authors studied a  group of 2,841 men (yes, men only) who were born between 1920 and 1924 in the area around Uppsala, Sweden. They were followed up on several occasions, the most recent in 2006. At the end of the study, 20% more of the men in the most active group were still alive compared to men in the least active group. Again, this was after controlling for a number of variables that might have also been different in the two groups.

Most interesting to me was how activity levels were defined. The researchers asked participants only four questions. The first asked whether the man spent most of his time reading, watching TV, or engaged in sedentary activities. Persons who answered yes were placed in the lowest activity group. The second question asked whether the man walked or bicycled freqently for pleasure. Persons answering yes to this question were in the middle group. The last two questions asked whether the men participated regularly in sports or other active recreational sport, and whether they engaged regularly in hard physical training. People who answered yes to either of these questions were placed in the high activity group.

People in the lowest activity had the highest chances of dying in the followup period, while those in the middle activity group had an intermediate risk of death. Those in the highest activity level group had the lowest risk of death.

Based on this study, almost any increase in physical activity is probably beneficial. Many other studies have shown that increasing physical activity helps you lose weight, makes it more likely that you’ll quit smoking, and means that you’ll feel better about your health. This study is new in showing that the health benefits of exercise may have effects that last a lifetime.

This article is freely available on the Web at the BMJ site:  Click here to view the abstract. You can read the entire article by clicking on the words “Full Text” at the upper left of the page.

Here’s a link to the article on the Times’ web site:

Click Here