Study Investigates Walking for Maintaining Brain Health

Professor Ulf Bronas, PhD, has begun recruiting people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and chronic kidney disease to investigate whether a six-month, home-based walking regimen can help stave off cognitive decline in this high-risk group.

“On average, a patient with chronic kidney disease has a brain that is about 10 years older than a healthy age- and sex-matched individual, and we don’t really know why that is,” Bronas notes.

He initiated the Accelerated Age-Related Cognitive Decline: Impact of Exercise on Executive Function and Neuroplasticity (EXEC) study while at the University of Illinois Chicago. Funded with $2.6 million from the National Institute on Aging, the five-year project will continue at Columbia Nursing for years three to five.

Participants will be assigned to a six-month exercise intervention or health education. The exercise group will receive instruction and coaching on walking and exercising safely, in a way that works for them and is tailored to their needs. The health education group will receive the same information and contact time, but no coaching.

Bronas and his colleagues hypothesize that the exercise group will show improvements in executive function, cognitive subdomains, brain white matter integrity, structure, and functional connectivity compared to the control group after six months.

“We think that walking improves blood flow and perfusion to the brain, which then helps the connectivity in the brain, which then helps to improve cognition,” he explains.