By the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP)

Main titles

• Getting into shape will improve your memory, cognitive skills and will have beneficial structural effects on the brain.
• Cognitive abilities and skills tested included memory, judgement and logic.

"It surprised us to see that even in a young population cognitive performance decreases as fitness levels drops. We knew how this might be important in an elderly population which does not necessarily have good health, but to see this happening in 30 year olds is surprising. This leads us to believe that a basic level of fitness seems to be a preventable risk factor for brain health." - Dr Jonathan Repple (University Hospital Muenster, Germany).

"This is an important cross-sectional study demonstrating a robust correlation between physical health and cognitive functioning in a large cohort of healthy young adults. This correlation was backed by changes in the white matter status of the brain supporting the notion that better macro-connectivity is related to better brain functioning. It stresses the importance of physical activity at all stages of life and as preliminary recent evidence suggests one can start improving physical health even in later life even if one has never trained before (see reference). These findings however need to be replicated in longitudinal studies and translated for the use in mental illness." - Professor Peter Falkai (University Clinic, Munich, Germany)

Source: ecnp.eu