{"doi":"10.3389/fresc.2022.923141","title":"Exercise engagement drives changes in cognition and cardiorespiratory fitness after 8 weeks of aerobic training in sedentary aging adults at risk of cognitive decline","abstract":"Background With our aging population, many individuals are at risk of developing age-related cognitive decline. Physical exercise has been demonstrated to enhance cognitive performance in aging adults. This study examined the effects of 8 weeks of aerobic exercise on cognitive performance and cardiorespiratory fitness in sedentary aging adults at risk for cognitive decline. Methods Fifty-two participants (age 62.9 ± 6.8, 76.9% female) engaged in eight weeks of moderate-to high-intensity exercise (19 in-person, 33 remotely). Global cognition was measured by the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status, the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System, and the Digit Span subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) Fourth Edition. Cardiorespiratory fitness was measured via heart rate recovery at minute 1 (HRR1) and 2 (HRR2), and exercise engagement (defined as percent of total exercise time spent in the prescribed heart rate zone). We measured pre and post changes using paired t -tests and mixed effects models, and investigated the association between cardiorespiratory and cognitive performance using multiple regression models. Cohen's d were calculated to estimate effect sizes. Results Overall, 63.4 % of participants demonstrated high engagement (≥ 70% total exercise time spent in the prescribed heart rate zone). There were significant pre-post improvements in verbal fluency and verbal memory, and a significant decrement in working memory, but these were associated with small effect sizes (Cohen's d <0.5). Concerning cardiorespiratory fitness, there was a pre-to-post significant improvement in HRR1 ( p = 0.01, d = 0.30) and HRR2 ( p < 0.001, d = 0.50). Multiple regressions revealed significant associations between cardiorespiratory and cognitive performance, but all were associated with small effect sizes (Cohen's d < 0.5). Interestingly, there were significant between-group differences in exercise engagement (all p < 0.001), with remote participants demonstrating greater exercise engagement than in-person participants. Conclusion Improvements in cognition and cardiorespiratory fitness were observed after 8 weeks of moderate to high-intensity exercise in aging adults. These results suggest that committing to a regular exercise regimen, even for a brief two-month period, can promote improvements in both cardiorespiratory fitness and cognitive performance, and that improvements are driven by exercise engagement.","journal":"Frontiers in Rehabilitation Sciences","year":2022,"id":273021,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":11,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9545,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":940001,"name":"Danylo F. Cabral","orcid":"0000-0003-0162-1039","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":940002,"name":"Marissa Ciesla","orcid":"0000-0002-8424-324X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":940550,"name":"Marti Flothmann","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":940003,"name":"Christina Nunez","orcid":"0000-0003-4527-661X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":940004,"name":"Jordyn Rice","orcid":"0000-0002-6250-5974","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":19442,"name":"David Loewenstein","orcid":"0000-0001-6788-2798","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":912356,"name":"Marcela Kitaigorodsky","orcid":"0000-0001-7949-2156","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":940005,"name":"Lawrence P. Cahalin","orcid":"0000-0001-8447-1026","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":310714,"name":"Tatjana Rundek","orcid":"0000-0002-7115-9815","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":106052,"name":"Álvaro Pascual‐Leone","orcid":"0000-0001-8975-0382","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":583274,"name":"Gabriele Cattaneo","orcid":"0000-0002-7411-6829","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":258901,"name":"Joyce Gomes‐Osman","orcid":"0000-0001-6510-0780","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":940000,"name":"Carrie Hinchman","orcid":"0000-0003-4513-0151","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":54,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:27:52.048702Z","pmid":"36189006","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}