Sex Moderates the Effect of Aerobic Exercise on Some Aspects of Cognition in Cognitively Intact Younger and Middle-Age Adults
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We recently reported the results of a randomized, parallel-group, observer-masked, community-based clinical trial of 132 cognitively normal individuals aged 20–67 with below median aerobic capacity who were randomly assigned to one of two 6-month, four-times-weekly conditions: aerobic exercise and stretching/toning. We now assessed potential sex moderation on exercise-related changes in aerobic capacity, BMI and cognitive function. There was no sex moderation of the effect of aerobic exercise on aerobic capacity or BMI. We had previously reported an effect of aerobic exercise on executive function that was moderated by age. We found additional moderation by sex, such that in any age range men improved more than women. Processing speed showed significant sex moderation but not significant age moderation. In men, processing speed significantly improved by week 12 (b = 0.35, p = 0.0051), but the effect was diminished relative to week 12 at week 24 (b = 0.24, p = 0.0578). In women, there was no exercise effect at either time point (week 12: b = −0.06, p = 0.4156; week 24: b = −0.11, p = 0.1841). Men benefited cognitively more than women from aerobic exercise. This study highlights the importance of using sex-disaggregated analyses when assessing the impact of physical exercise intervention, and the need to ascertain the underlying mechanisms for differential cognitive benefit by sex.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".