He likes the people and the work. It is not only his passion, but also his profession. He is a Rutgers professor of neuroscience and public health and director of the Aging and Brain Health Alliance at Rutgers University-Newark.<\/div>\n
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Recently, by studying some of the same seniors he had been working with, his team unlocked a few more secrets about how exercise helps the aging brain and why. We asked this avid cyclist and Penn Valley native about it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nMark Gluck is a Rutgers neuroscientist who studies how exercise helps the brain.<\/i><\/p>\nIt\u2019s been well-established that exercise improves brain health. What was missing that you were trying to learn?<\/h4>\nYes, we do know that exercise is good for our brain. It helps our memory and our alertness. But what is actually changing in the brain?<\/div>\n
And why is it that when some people exercise, it makes their mind super sharp and super bright, and really helps the brain, but when other people do a lot of exercise, it doesn\u2019t help their brain so much? Exercise may help their heart. It may help other aspects of health. But there seems to be lots of individual variation in how much different people\u2019s memory and brain function benefits from exercise.<\/div>\n
What we are focusing on is this: What is it that predicts who will be resilient and maintain their brain health over the long term? For that reason, we don\u2019t study people with Alzheimer\u2019s disease. Rather, we look at people who are exceptional super-agers, people who are doing fabulously in their 80s, 90s, or beyond. We are recruiting people who at that age are sharper than the average 50-year-old. From studying them, we want to find out how to help everyone else maintain similar optimal brain health. As such, our focus is the pathways to healthy aging.<\/div>\n
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How did you set up the study?<\/h4>\nWe held exercise classes in churches and senior centers in the greater Newark area. People would come in twice a week, for an hour each time. They did cardio-fitness dance exercise \u2014 sort of like Zumba, but with a broader range of music, including Motown and R&B. It was fun. It was social. They did this for 20 weeks \u2014 five months. We had a comparison group that did not exercise.<\/div>\n
Before and afterward, we evaluated their cognition, and, with MRIs, their brain activity. An MRI gives you an indirect measure of which parts of the brain are most active at any given point in time.<\/div>\n
As part of our study of Pathways to Healthy Aging in African Americans, we worked specifically with African Americans. African Americans have traditionally been underrepresented in biomedical research. And that\u2019s a problem, particularly for research into aging and Alzheimer\u2019s disease because African Americans have two to three times the rate of Alzheimer\u2019s, compared to Caucasians. A lot of the reason behind this health disparity is probably health and lifestyle factors, including exercise.<\/div>\n
\nMark Gluck has been running brain health education programs at churches and senior centers in the Newark area. This photo shows a class at New Hope Baptist Church.<\/i><\/p>\n