A new study has disclosed that taking exercise on a regular basis can reverse the decline in brain power, which comes with growing age and Alzheimer’s disease.

The researchers discovered that aerobic exercise can increase the speed and sharpness of thought plus the actual size of brain tissue.

Lead researcher Professor Art Kramer, cognitive neuroscientist from the US Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, USA, mentioned previous study pointing that six months of exercise reversed age-related decline in the brain.

The study, published in the ‘British Journal of Sports Medicine’, suggested that a decline in the brain's white and grey matter causes cognitive deterioration as people age.

Professor Kramer said, “Tissue deterioration is often accompanied by decline in cognitive function, with the greatest deficits occurring on measures of executive control such as task co-ordination, planning, goal maintenance, working memory, and task switching.”

“However, it is these executive control processes that appear to be the most amenable to an aerobic exercise intervention,” he added.

He also pointed out that aerobic exercise for six months reversed age-related deterioration, and the brains of older adults retained the ability to mature and develop, called plasticity.

Physically fitter adults have less evidence of decline in grey matter as compared to their less physically fit contemporaries, the report stated.

“The effect of aerobic exercise training on cognitive function also seems to extend to older adults with dementia,” Prof. Kramer added.

He concluded, “We can safely argue that an active lifestyle with moderate amounts of aerobic activity will likely improve cognitive and brain function, and reverse the neural decay frequently observed in older adults.”