Efeito agudo do exercício físico aeróbio com estimulação cognitiva sobre a memória e concentrações sérica do BDNF em idosos

Abstract

Human aging is characterized by different physiological and functional changes that may be influenced by lifestyle, genetic and environmental factors. Among the consequences of these changes are cognitive deficits, principally memory, affecting the activities of daily life of elderly. Cognitive training intervention combined with exercise has been widely indicated as an alternative to promote cognitive health, however, studies investigating exercise combined with cognitive stimulation are still rare and inconclusive. Objective: To determine the effects of the combination of single session aerobic exercise with cognitive stimulation over memory performance and increased Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) in the elderly. Methods: This study was characterized as almost experimental, with randomized and crossover design, fulfill with 30 elderly men and women (69.3 ± 5.8 years; 29.7 ± 3.9 kg.cm-²) who were subjected to three different sessions, including two sessions of physical exercise (one with automatic exercise and other with cognitive stimulation) and a control session, each session lasted 50 minutes. The memory was evaluated using the word list test, also serum BDNF was measured from blood sampling immediately before and immediately after each session. After the collection, was found normality and homogeneity of variances. We used two-way ANOVA to compare repeated measures both the concentration of BDNF and as the memory test between sessions and the session itself. We adopted as statistically significant level p <5%. Results: In relation to memory, the sessions were not different from each other (F (2, 89) = 0.36, P = 0.697, ᢀp = 0.008,), however, there was a significant effect in relation to time, indicating that there was a reduction of memory performance in post exercise in all sessions for both the short term memory (control – p = 0.002, automatic – p < 0.001 and exercise with stimulation – p = 0.023) and for work memory (automatic – p = 0.012 and exercise with stimulation – p = 0.015). In relation to the levels of concentration of BDNF, the sessions were not different each other (F (2, 90) = 0.06, P = 0.941, ᢀp = 0.001), in the same way, there was no significance in interaction time × session (F (2, 90) = 1.37, P = 0.260, ᢀp = 0.029) and in time (F (1, 90) = 0.14, P = 0.712, = 0.002 ᢀp). Conclusion: Moderate intensity aerobic exercise simultaneously with cognitive stimulation is not enough to increase the brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which may negatively affect the performance of memory in tasks performed soon after exercise