Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Currently, more than 747,000 Canadians are living with cognitive impairment and dementia, and this number is expected to double to 1.4 million by the year 2031. There is no effective treatment or cure for dementia, indicating an urgent need for prevention research. Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure are two conditions that may increase the risk of cognitive decline and dementia. On the other hand, physical activity can reduce the risk or delay the onset of decline. Physical activity interventions have even shown that older adults can improve their cognitive functioning through increased aerobic exercise. Past research has been limited in the following ways: 1) interventions focus on healthy individuals 2) the effect of multiple health conditions is rarely addressed, and 3) little is known about how exercise may improve cognition within the same day. This will be the first study to evaluate how physical activity may improve cognition among individuals with type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure over time and within the same day. A sample of 60 older adults with these two conditions will be randomly assigned to a 3- month exercise intervention or a control group. We will administer cognitive tests (including memory and attention) pre- and post-intervention, and participants will complete brief cognitive tests on the computer 5 days each week. Participants will wear activity trackers so that we can obtain information about their heart rate and step count. We hypothesize that the intervention group will perform significantly better than the control group on the follow-up cognitive tests. We also expect that participants will demonstrate better cognitive performance on days when they are more active than usual. This research has the potential to inform interventions for individuals with these highly prevalent health conditions. By intervening before signs of cognitive impairment are observable, we may be able to combat the growing rates of dementia in Canada.