Skip to main content
Log in

Body mass and cardiorespiratory fitness are associated with altered brain metabolism

Metabolic Brain Disease Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy provides measures of brain chemistry that are sensitive to cardiorespiratory fitness and body composition. The concentration of N-acetyl aspartic acid (NAA) is of interest because it is a marker of neuronal integrity. The ratio of NAA to creatine, a standard reference metabolite, has been shown to correlate with measures of both cardiorespiratory fitness and body composition. However, previous studies have explored these effects in isolation, making it impossible to know which of these highly correlated measures drive the correlations with NAA/Cr. As a result, the mechanisms underlying their association remain to be established. We therefore conducted a comprehensive study to investigate the relative contributions of cardiorespiratory fitness and percent body fat in predicting NAA/Cr. We demonstrate that NAA/Cr in white matter is correlated with percent body fat, and that this relationship largely subsumes the correlation of NAA/Cr with cardiorespiratory fitness. These results underscore the association of body composition with axonal integrity and suggests that this relationship drives the association of NAA/Cr with physical fitness in young adults.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

References

Download references

Acknowledgements

The research is based upon work supported by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), via Contract 2014-13121700004 to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (PI: Barbey). The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of the ODNI, IARPA, or the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Governmental purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation thereon.

We thank Nancy Dodge, Holly Tracy, Tracy Henigman, and Courtney Allen for assistance in performing the experiments.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

Ryan J. Larsen: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data Curation, Writing-Original Draft, Writing – Review & Editing, Visualization, Supervision. Lauren B. Raine: Writing – Review & Editing Charles H. Hillman: Conceptualization, Writing – Review & Editing, Project administration, Funding acquisition Arthur F. Kramer: Conceptualization, Writing – Review & Editing, Project administration, Funding acquisition Neal J. Cohen: Conceptualization, Writing – Review & Editing, Project administration, Funding acquisition Aron K. Barbey: Conceptualization, Writing – Review & Editing, Project administration, Funding acquisition.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ryan J. Larsen.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors have no financial conflicts of interest to report.

Informed consent

This study was performed in accordance with the Institutional Review Board at the University of Illinois, and informed consent was obtained from all study participants.

Data Sharing

Study data are available at the Illinois Data Bank, https://doi.org/10.13012/B2IDB-9371397_V1.

Additional information

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Larsen, R.J., Raine, L.B., Hillman, C.H. et al. Body mass and cardiorespiratory fitness are associated with altered brain metabolism. Metab Brain Dis 35, 999–1007 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11011-020-00560-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11011-020-00560-z

Keywords

Navigation