Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
2001 S. Lincoln Ave.
URBANA,IL 61801
Performing Department
Nutritional Sciences
Non Technical Summary
There is a growing public health burden of inactivity among children of industrialized nations. In recent years, children have become increasingly inactive, leading to concomitant increases in the prevalence of being overweight and unfit. Inactivity during childhood often continues throughout life and has implications for the prevalence of several chronic diseases (e.g., obesity, cardiovascular disease, type-2 diabetes) during adulthood. These adult-onset diseases have also become more prevalent during childhood and adolescence, exacerbating the need to develop novel treatments that provide enduring benefit by altering the chronic and oftentimes debilitating course of these lifestyle diseases, which stand to impact the individual and society both in terms of cost and suffering. Of further interest is the absence of public health concern for the effect of physical inactivity and excess body mass on brain health and cognition. It is curious that this has not emerged as a larger societal issue, given its obvious relation to childhood obesity and other inactivity-related disorders that have captured the attention of industrialized nations. Many school districts have minimized or obviated physical activity opportunities from the school day despite a growing literature indicating the benefits of physical activity to cognitive health and learning. Such educational practices are growing in popularity due to budgetary constraints and an increased emphasis placed upon student performance on standardized tests. It is counterintuitive that spending less time in the classroom and more time engaged in physical activities might improve cognition and learning, yet human and non-human animal research is consonant in suggesting that physical activity benefits brain health and concomitant cognitive processes, with available evidence implicating molecular, cellular, systems, and behavioral level changes. Accordingly, our aim is to investigate the relation of fitness and body mass to cognition in middle school aged children using a comprehensive assessment of cognitive control, memory, and academic achievement. It is our intent that these data may serve to influence public health professionals regarding an additional consequence of physical inactivity and excess body mass during childhood, and illuminate the potential detrimental relationship with scholastic achievement, and more broadly, cognition. Thus, our research stands to change public policy by impacting children during the school day.
Animal Health Component
25%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
25%
Applied
25%
Developmental
50%
Goals / Objectives
The aim of this project is to investigate the relation of fitness and body mass to cognition in middle school aged children using a comprehensive assessment of cognitive control, memory, and academic achievement. Thus, the current proposal aims to track children upon entering middle school; a three year period spanning sixth through eighth grade, on factors related to physical (i.e., physical fitness, body mass) and cognitive (cognitive control, memory, scholastic performance) health. This application will support the first year of study (i.e., baseline measures and the time one follow up), with the goal of expanding this line of research over the next several years to track children through the three year period of middle school and beyond. While our initial goals are to investigate the relationship between fitness and body mass with cognition and scholastic performance; future goals for this area of study will incorporate diet and nutrition, given their obvious relation with body mass and more broadly, health.
Project Methods
This study will occur in a single junior high school in Champaign, Illinois. Sixth grade students will have their aerobic fitness assessed and measures of body mass index taken while in their regular physical education classes. Next, they will undergo a battery of cognitive tasks that tap executive control or relational memory. These tasks will be delivered via a laptop computer in school during the school day. Lastly, parental consent will include access to the child's academic achievement test scores on the Illinois Standardized Achievement Test. This procedure will occur during the fall of the participants sixth grade year, and then again during the spring of their sixth, seventh, and eighth grade years. Statistical analyses will include multiple linear regression with each dependent variable (i.e., outcomes from the cognitive and memory tests, and the ISAT scores) regressed onto the fitness and body mass measures. Any demographic factors (e.g., age, gender, etc.) found to correlate with the dependent variables will be included in the model as well.