Exercise for the Aging Brain - How Much is Necessary?

Gretchen Reynolds points to interesting work on exercise and the aging brain by Vidoni et. al. Increasing amounts of aerobic exercise (75, 150, 225 minutes per week of walking) correlated with correspondingly increased cardiorespiratory fitness, but the degree of improvement in thinking skills, compared with non-exercising controls, was the same regardless of the duration of exercise. This suggests that a small dose of exercise may be sufficient to improve many aspects of thinking.