Cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with cortical thickness of medial temporal brain areas associated with spatial cognition in young but not older adults

• Published in: The European journal of neuroscience Vol. 59; no. 1; pp. 82 - 100
• Main Authors: Rosario, Michael A., Kern, Kathryn L., Mumtaz, Shiraz, Storer, Thomas W., Schon, Karin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: France Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.01.2024
• Subjects: Adult; Aged; Cardiorespiratory Fitness; Cognition; Cross-Sectional Studies; entorhinal cortex; Hippocampus; Hippocampus - diagnostic imaging; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; medial temporal lobe; Memory; Navigation behavior; Older people; parahippocampal cortex; perirhinal cortex; spatial cognition; Spatial discrimination learning; Spatial memory; Temporal lobe; Temporal Lobe - diagnostic imaging; Young Adult; Young adults; entorhinal cortex; spatial cognition; medial temporal lobe; cardiorespiratory fitness; parahippocampal cortex; perirhinal cortex
• ISSN: 0953-816X; 1460-9568
• DOI: 10.1111/ejn.16200

Cardiorespiratory fitness has a potent effect on neurocognitive health, especially regarding the hippocampal memory system. However, less is known about the impact of cardiorespiratory fitness on medial temporal lobe extrahippocampal neocortical regions. Specifically, it is unclear how cardiorespiratory fitness modulates these brain regions in young adulthood and if these regions are differentially related to cardiorespiratory fitness in young versus older adults. The primary goal of this study was to investigate if cardiorespiratory fitness predicted medial temporal lobe cortical thickness which, with the hippocampus, are critical for spatial learning and memory. Additionally, given the established role of these cortices in spatial navigation, we sought to determine if cardiorespiratory fitness and medial temporal lobe cortical thickness would predict greater subjective sense of direction in both young and older adults. Cross‐sectional data from 56 young adults (20–35 years) and 44 older adults (55–85 years) were included. FreeSurfer 6.0 was used to automatically segment participants' 3T T1‐weighted images. Using hierarchical multiple regression analyses, we confirmed significant associations between greater cardiorespiratory fitness and greater left entorhinal, left parahippocampal, and left perirhinal cortical thickness in young, but not older, adults. Left parahippocampal cortical thickness interacted with age group to differentially predict subjective sense of direction in young and older adults. Young adults displayed a positive, and older adults a negative, correlation between left parahippocampal cortical thickness and sense of direction. Our findings extend previous work on the association between cardiorespiratory fitness and hippocampal subfield structure in young adults to left medial temporal lobe neocortical regions. This sets of plots show the primary novel findings in our manuscript. Using hierarchical multiple regression, we found that greater cardiorespiratory fitness was associated with greater cortical thickness of the left entorhinal, parahippocampal and perirhinal cortex in young, but not older, adults when controlling for sex, chronological age and education.