High- and low-intensity resistance training as a means to improve brain and muscle function in older adults
The benefits of physical activity are diverse, spanning numerous domains of physical health and well-being. Nevertheless, research on physical activity 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 the current literature have focused on the effects of intervention on the structural, biochemical or functional properties of either the brain or the neuromuscular system, and only a few have examined the impact of intervention on both within a single experimental design. As a result, our understanding of how specific exercise is "sensed" by the brain, and of how neuroplasticity and neurogenesis in the brain are activated or regulated by the effect of intervention on the neuromuscular system (and vice versa), remains limited.
Moreover, not all exercise regimens are universally effective, and they 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, and there is limited understanding of the characteristics that help identify responders and non-responders. Identifying health markers of the response to exercise training will therefore greatly enhance clinicians' ability to prescribe physical activity 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 amplifying the beneficial and mitigating the detrimental effects of exercise training on health at older age. Specifically, we aim to identify brain, blood and muscle biomarkers that could serve as predictors of the response to exercise training at both the muscular and the brain level, and to study the associations between these biomarkers in order to propose a physiological model of brain–muscle and muscle–brain crosstalk in ageing.
Study 1: The effects of three months of blood flow restriction training on brain neuroplasticity and function and on neuromuscular adaptation.
Study 2: The impact of six months of progressive resistance exercise on intrinsic capacity, cognition, and brain and circulating biomarkers of neuroplasticity and neuroinflammation in older adults with mild cognitive impairment: a randomized controlled trial.
Supervisors:
Prof. dr. Ivan Bautmans (FRIA, VUB) – ivan.bautmans@vub.be
Prof. dr. Nerijus Masiulis (LSU) – nerijus.masiulis@lsu.lt