A study involving 65 older adults (59-80), who were very sedentary before the study (reporting less than two episodes of physical activity lasting 30 minutes or more in the previous six months), has found that those who joined a walking group improved their cognitive performance and the connectivity in important brain circuits after a year. However, those who joined a stretching and toning group showed no such improvement. The walking program involved three 40-minute walks at a moderate pace every week. The two affected brain circuits (the default mode network and the fronto-executive network) typically become less connected with age. It is worth emphasizing that the improvement was not evident at the first test, after six months, but only at the second 12-month test.

Interestingly, I noticed in the same journal issue a study into the long-term benefits of dancing for older adults. The study compared physical and cognitive performance of those who had engaged in amateur dancing for many years (average: 16.5 years) and those with no dancing or sporting engagement. The dancing group were overall significantly better than the other group on all tests: posture, balance, reaction time, motor behavior, cognitive performance. However, the best dancers weren’t any better than individuals in the other group; the group difference arose because none of the dancers performed poorly, while many of the other group did.