Synergistic Benefits of Combined Aerobic and Cognitive Training on Fluid Intelligence and the Role of IGF-1 in Chronic Stroke

What Was Tested

Researchers studied IGF-1 LR3 in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Paired exercise and cognitive training have the potential to enhance cognition by "priming" the brain and upregulating neurotrophins.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

Fifty-two patients >6 months poststroke with concerns about cognitive impairment trained 50 to 70 minutes, 3× week for 10 weeks with 12-week follow-up.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the IGF-1 LR3 group and the comparison group should start out alike.

A time span of 10 weeks appears in the methods.

Exercise was paired with 1 of 2 cognitive interventions (computerized dual working memory training [COG] or control computer games [Games]).

The primary outcome for the 4 groups (Aerobic + COG, Aerobic + Games, Activity + COG, and Activity + Games) was fluid intelligence measured using Raven's Progressive Matrices Test administered at baseline, posttraining, and 3-month follow-up.

Serum neurotrophins collected at one site (N = 30) included brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) at rest (BDNFresting) and after a graded exercise test (BDNFresponse) and insulin-like growth factor-1 at the same timepoints (IGF-1rest, IGF-1response).

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Chronic Disease, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Combined Modality Therapy, Exercise Therapy, Insulin-Like Growth Factor I, Intelligence and Stroke.

Author keywords: brain-derived neurotrophic factor, cognition, fluid intelligence, insulin-like growth factor–1, neuroplasticity and rehabilitation.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of IGF-1 LR3 over 10 weeks.

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2019 (Neurorehabilitation and neural repair), a journal based in United States.

More context: the IGF-1 LR3 compound page, all human trials.