TY  - JOUR
AU  - Lövdén, Martin
AU  - Schaefer, Sabine
AU  - Noack, Hannes
AU  - Bodammer, Nils Christian
AU  - Kühn, Simone
AU  - Heinze, Hans-Jochen
AU  - Düzel, Emrah
AU  - Bäckman, Lars
AU  - Lindenberger, Ulman
TI  - Spatial navigation training protects the hippocampus against age-related changes during early and late adulthood.
JO  - Neurobiology of aging
VL  - 33
IS  - 3
SN  - 0197-4580
CY  - Amsterdam [u.a.]
PB  - Elsevier Science
M1  - DZNE-2020-02743
SP  - 620.e9-620.e22
PY  - 2012
AB  - It is unknown whether lifestyle, including mental stimulation, and appropriate training interventions, may directly improve spatial navigation performance and its underlying neural substrates. Here we report that healthy younger and older men performing a cognitively demanding spatial navigation task every other day over 4 months display navigation-related gains in performance and stable hippocampal volumes that were maintained 4 months after termination of training. In contrast, control groups displayed volume decrements consistent with longitudinal estimates of age-related decline. Hippocampal barrier density, as indicated by mean diffusivity estimated from diffusion tensor imaging, showed a quadratic shape of increased density after training followed by a return to baseline in the right hippocampus, but declined in the control groups and in the left hippocampus. We conclude that sustained experiential demands on spatial ability protect hippocampal integrity against age-related decline. These results provide the first longitudinal evidence indicating that spatial navigation experience modifies hippocampal volumes in humans, and confirm epidemiological results suggesting that mental stimulation may have direct effects on neural integrity.
KW  - Adult
KW  - Age Factors
KW  - Aged
KW  - Aging: pathology
KW  - Aging: psychology
KW  - Exercise Therapy: instrumentation
KW  - Exercise Therapy: methods
KW  - Female
KW  - Hippocampus: pathology
KW  - Hippocampus: physiopathology
KW  - Humans
KW  - Male
KW  - Memory Disorders: physiopathology
KW  - Memory Disorders: prevention & control
KW  - Memory Disorders: therapy
KW  - Middle Aged
KW  - User-Computer Interface
KW  - Young Adult
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - pmid:21497950
DO  - DOI:10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2011.02.013
UR  - https://pub.dzne.de/record/136421
ER  -