title: Spatial navigation training protects the hippocampus against age-related changes during early and late adulthood.
abstract: It is unknown whether lifestyle, including mental stimulation, and appropriate training interventions, may directly improve spatial navigation performance and its underlying neural substrates. Here we report that healthy younger and older men performing a cognitively demanding spatial navigation task every other day over 4 months display navigation-related gains in performance and stable hippocampal volumes that were maintained 4 months after termination of training. In contrast, control groups displayed volume decrements consistent with longitudinal estimates of age-related decline. Hippocampal barrier density, as indicated by mean diffusivity estimated from diffusion tensor imaging, showed a quadratic shape of increased density after training followed by a return to baseline in the right hippocampus, but declined in the control groups and in the left hippocampus. We conclude that sustained experiential demands on spatial ability protect hippocampal integrity against age-related decline. These results provide the first longitudinal evidence indicating that spatial navigation experience modifies hippocampal volumes in humans, and confirm epidemiological results suggesting that mental stimulation may have direct effects on neural integrity.
authors.affiliation: Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany. loevden@mpib-berlin.mpg.de
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lövdén
authors.forename: Sabine
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Schaefer
authors.forename: Hannes
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Noack
authors.forename: Nils Christian
authors.initials: NC
authors.lastname: Bodammer
authors.forename: Simone
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kühn
authors.forename: Hans-Jochen
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Heinze
authors.forename: Emrah
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Düzel
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bäckman
authors.forename: Ulman
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Lindenberger
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000473:pathology* / Q000523:psychology; D005081:Exercise Therapy / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000628:therapy; D008875:Middle Aged; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D055815:Young Adult