“As we all find out eventually, we lose a bit mentally and physically as we age. But even if you start an exercise program later in life, the benefit to your brain may be immense,” said study author Marc J. Poulin, Ph.D., D.Phil., from the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. “Sure, aerobic exercise gets blood moving through your body. As our study found, it may also get blood moving to your brain, particularly in areas responsible for verbal fluency and executive functions. Our finding may be important, especially for older adults at risk for Alzheimer’s and other dementias and brain disease.”

The study involved 206 adults who prior to starting the six-month exercise intervention worked out no more than four days per week at a moderate intensity for 30 minutes or less, or no more than two days per week a high intensity for 20 minutes or less per day. They had an average age of 66 and no history of heart or memory problems. Participants were given thinking and memory tests at the start of the study, as well as an ultrasound to measure blood flow in the brain. Physical testing was repeated at three months, and thinking and physical testing repeated at the end of the six months.

Participants were enrolled in a supervised aerobic exercise program held three days a week. As they progressed through the program, they increased their workout from an average of 20 minutes a day to an average of at least 40 minutes. In addition, people were asked to work out on their own once a week.

Researchers found that after six months of exercise, participants improved by 5.7% on tests of executive function, which includes mental flexibility and self-correction. Verbal fluency, which tests how quickly you can retrieve information, increased by 2.4%.

“This change in verbal fluency is what you’d expect to see in someone five years younger,” Poulin said.

Before and after six months of aerobic activity, the participants’ average peak blood flow to the brain was measured using ultrasound. Blood flow rose from an average of 51.3 centimeters per second (cm/sec) to an average of 52.7 cm/sec, a 2.8% increase. The increase in blood flow with exercise was associated with a number of modest but significant improvements in aspects of thinking that usually decline as we age, Poulin said.

“Our study showed that six months’ worth of vigorous exercise may pump blood to regions of the brain that specifically improve your verbal skills as well as memory and mental sharpness,” said Poulin. “At a time when these results would be expected to be decreasing due to normal aging, to have these types of increases is exciting.”

A limitation of the study was that the people doing the exercise were not compared to a similar group of people who were not exercising, so the results may have been due to other factors, although the researchers tried to control for this by testing participants twice over six months before the start of the program. In addition, some of the exercise was unsupervised, so the amount reported may be unreliable.

The study was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, The Brenda Strafford Foundation Chair in Alzheimer Research, and the Alzheimer Society of Canada Research Program.

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Materials provided by American Academy of Neurology. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Magnetic resonance imaging showed impairments to brain growth during the third trimester of pregnancy, even though the fetus was exposed to alcohol only during the first trimester.

The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, highlights the danger of binge drinking early in a pregnancy, even before a woman realizes she’s pregnant. It also suggests the potential benefit of using in-utero imaging to detect signs of fetal-alcohol syndrome before birth.

“The earlier the detection, the better,” said senior author Chris Kroenke, Ph.D., associate professor in the Division of Neuroscience at the Oregon National Primate Research Center at OHSU. “Predicting risks for specific impairments means that therapy can start soon after the baby is born, when the brain has the greatest plasticity.”

The study builds upon recent advancements in the quality and resolution of magnetic resonance imaging methods used to examine the fetal brain in utero.

“The goal of this study was to assess the sensitivity of this common clinical diagnostic to detect the impact of drinking binge level intakes of alcohol [4-6 drinks] early in pregnancy to model patterns of drinking in women before they know they are pregnant,” said co-author Kathleen Grant, Ph.D., professor and chief of the Division of Neuroscience at the primate center.

Researchers at the primate center monitored a total of 28 pregnant macaques, measuring brain development through MRIs at three stages of pregnancy. In an experiment that would not be possible to conduct in people, half of the macaques consumed the daily human equivalent of six alcoholic drinks per day while the rest consumed no alcohol.

Imaging during the course of the pregnancy revealed a difference in fetal brain development by the 135th day of a 168-day gestational term, at the beginning of the third trimester. Imaging revealed no difference with the control group measured during the second trimester.

Electrophysiological recordings of the brains following MRI suggested the differences are functionally significant. Aside from validating the potential usefulness as an early diagnostic tool for fetal alcohol syndrome, researchers say the images generated during the study were of high enough quality that they expect it to be useful as a point of comparison for other scientists working in the field.

“The brain atlases described in our paper have been uploaded to a website where other researchers can access it,” Kroenke said.

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Materials provided by Oregon Health & Science University. Original written by Erik Robinson. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

The results bring to light a dissonance between professional recommendations and clinical practice, the researchers behind the study say.

Autism spectrum disorder is one of the most strongly genetic neuropsychiatric conditions. Medical professional societies — such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Medical Genetics, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry — recommend offering chromosomal microarray testing and Fragile X testing for patients diagnosed with autism. The tests can identify or rule out genetic abnormalities that could have implications in a patient’s diagnosis and clinical care.

The study, published in JAMA Psychiatry on May 13, analyzed 1,280 participants with autism spectrum disorder based on medical records and self-reported data from the time period of April 2013 to April 2019. The participants are enrolled with RI-CART, a public-private-academic collaborative focused on advancing research and building community among individuals with autism spectrum disorder in Rhode Island and their families. The study’s goal was to determine the current state of clinical genetic testing for autism in this cohort, said authors Dr. Daniel Moreno De Luca and Dr. Eric Morrow.

Of the 1,280 participants, 16.5% reported having received some genetic testing, with 13.2% stating they received Fragile X testing, and 4.5% reporting that they received chromosomal microarray testing. However, only 3% of participants reported having received both recommended tests.

“I had the impression that the frequency of recommended genetic testing was not going to be very high based on the patients I encounter clinically, but 3% is actually lower than I thought it would be,” said Moreno De Luca, an assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University, who is affiliated with the Carney Institute for Brain Science, and a psychiatrist at Bradley Hospital. “A higher proportion has had either test individually, and the proportion of people with chromosomal microarray is higher in recent calendar years, which is a hopeful glimpse for people who are being diagnosed recently and who may be younger. However, this underscores that there is still significant work to be done, especially for adults on the autism spectrum.”

In the study, researchers examine possible reasons for the gap between clinical practice and the recommendations from medical professional societies. Age was among the most prominent, as people with autism in older age groups are less likely to be tested. According to the study, adults with autism were generally unlikely to have undergone the clinical genetic tests.

The researchers also found that patients diagnosed by subspecialist pediatricians were more likely to report genetic testing as compared to those diagnosed by psychiatrists and psychologists.

“This paper is really about how you implement clinical genetic tests in the clinical diagnostic setting,” said Dr. Eric Morrow, an associate professor of biology at Brown and director of the Developmental Disorders Genetics Research Program at Bradley Hospital. “There is rapid progress from research, and then there’s the doctor and health systems that need to translate that to clinical practice. The clinics need to set up more support to educate clinicians and families about genetics and autism. Generally, this is done by genetic counselors who may be rare in autism clinics.”

Furthermore, the researchers found that nearly 10% of participants who received an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis between 2010 and 2014 reported receiving chromosomal microarray testing, one of the more modern genetic tests. Compared to those in the study who received a diagnosis in years before 2010, this showed an increase in self-reported testing.

“There is a more hopeful message that conveys that the success in implementing clinical genetic testing is increasing,” said Morrow, who is affiliated with the Carney Institute, co-leads the Autism Initiative at the Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute at Brown and directs the University’s Center for Translational Neuroscience.

Based at Bradley Hospital in East Providence, the team behind RI-CART represents a partnership between researchers at Brown, Bradley Hospital and Women and Infants that also involves nearly every site of service for people on the autism spectrum and their families in Rhode Island.

As a next step, the researchers behind the JAMA Psychiatry study are conducting a separate study to understand in greater detail the factors that could be influencing the rate of genetic testing.

“Challenges can be found on the patient and families side, on the physician side, and on the systemic side with institutional requirements and many other potential barriers,” said Moreno De Luca. “We want to address each of those factors independently.”

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Materials provided by Brown University. Original written by Sara Feijo. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.