High and Low intensity resistance training as a mean to improve brain and muscle function in older adults
Study 1: The effects of 3 months of Blood Flow Restriction Training on brain neuroplasticity and function and neuromuscular adaptation
Study 2: The Impact of 6-months of Progressive Resistance Exercise on Intrinsic Capacity, Cognition, and Brain/Circulating Biomarkers of Neuroplasticity and Neuroinflammation in Older Adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment: a Randomized Controlled Trial.
The benefits of physical activity (PA) are diverse, spanning numerous domains of physical health and well-being.Nevertheless, research on PA in older age, lacks a holistic design approach. Intervention studies often focus on specific outcome measures without taking into account potent interactions between subsystems. For example, most studies available in current literature focused on the effects of intervention on structural, biochemical or functional properties of the brain or neuromuscular system but only few studies examined the impact of intervention on both in a single experimental design. Therefore, our understanding of how specific exercise is “sensed” by the brain and how neuroplasticity and neurogenesis in the brain become activated or regulated by effect of intervention on the neuromuscular system (and the other way around) is rather limited. Moreover, not all exercise regimens are universally effective and should therefore not be treated as a "one-size fits all" prescription. Inter-individual responses of biological and behavioural health markers to exercise training exist, with limited understanding of characteristics that help identify non-responders and responders. Therefore, identifying health markers to exercise training will greatly enhance clinicians' ability to prescribe PA in a more individualized and effective manner. The current project is driven by the idea that understanding the mechanisms through which muscle and brain interact could offer new approaches to magnifying the beneficial and detrimental effects of exercise training on health at older age. Specifically, we aim at identifying brain, blood, and muscle biomarkers that could serve as predictors of response to exercise training at both muscular and brain levels and study the associations between those biomarkers in order to suggest a physiological models of brain-muscle and muscle-brain crosstalk in ageing.
Principal investigators
Ivan Bautmans (ivan.bautmans@vub.be)
Masiulis Nerijus (nerijus.masiulis@lsu.lt )