Stand, Don't Sit!

This recent article in the LA Times reported on research from the UCLA Semel Institute Center for Cognitive Neuroscience.  The research found a connection between time spent sitting and atrophy of the cortex of the brain's medial temporal lobe.  The research found that this part of the brain atrophies more rapidly in people who spend more time sitting, but it couldn't find a connection with physical exercise.  That was surprising.

While the hippocampus is the part of the brain's medial temporal lobe that processes short-term memories, it's the surrounding medial temporal cortex actually stores the memories long term.  (Short term memories are stored in the pre-frontal lobe.)  The research found that people who sit more experience more atrophy of the medial temporal cortex.  While this is an area of active research, it appears that this atrophy affects long-term memory. 

One of the first casualties of AD is the hippocampus, where, among other things, short-term memories from the pre-frontal lobe are processed for long-term storage in the medial temporal lobe cortex.  So it would appear that physical aerobic exercise benefits the hippocampus and memory formation, but less sitting and more standing benefits the areas of the brain responsible for, among other things, storage of long-term memory.