ArticleFrontiers in human neuroscience2016
Aerobic Fitness Linked to Cortical Brain Development in Adolescent Males: Preliminary Findings Suggest a Possible Role of BDNF Genotype.
Article in Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- Physical Activity and Adolescent Brain Structure, Mental Health, and Academic Outcomes.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Associations Between Nutrition Knowledge, Body Composition, and Cardiopulmonary Exercise Performance in Adolescent Football Players.Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Exploring Links between Brain Image-Derived Phenotypes and Accelerometer-Measured Physical Activity in the UK Biobank.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Comparison of Acute Irisin and Cognitive Responses to Different Exercise Modalities Among Late Adolescents.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The Effects of Cardiopulmonary Fitness on Executive Functioning or Academic Performance in Students from Early Childhood to Adolescence? A Systematic Review.Journal of functional morphology and kinesiology · 2025Review
- Relations between 24-h movement behaviors, declarative memory, and hippocampal volume in early childhood.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with cortical thickness of medial temporal brain areas associated with spatial cognition in young but not older adults.The European journal of neuroscience · 2024Article
- Association between exercise habits in adolescence and old age and the risk of mild cognitive impairment: the Bunkyo health study.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2024Article
- Youth Team Sports Participation Associates With Reduced Dimensional Psychopathology Through Interaction With Biological Risk Factors.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2023Article
- Exploring the Mediating Role of Executive Function in the Relationship between Aerobic Fitness and Academic Achievement in Adolescents.Brain sciences · 2023Article
- Physical activity and exercise alter cognitive abilities, and brain structure and activity in obese children.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Review
- Understanding the role of aerobic fitness, spatial learning, and hippocampal subfields in adolescent males.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- The Roles of Physical Activity, Exercise, and Fitness in Promoting Resilience During Adolescence: Effects on Mental Well-Being and Brain Development.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2021Review
- Cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness associations with older adolescent cognitive control.Journal of sport and health science · 2021Article
- Objective aerobic fitness level and neuropsychological functioning in healthy adolescents and emerging adults: Unique sex effects.Psychology of sport and exercise · 2020Article
- The Potential Mediation of the Effects of Physical Activity on Cognitive Function by the Gut Microbiome.Geriatrics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Review
- Associations of Objectively-Assessed Physical Activity and Sedentary Time with Hippocampal Gray Matter Volume in Children with Overweight/Obesity.Journal of clinical medicine · 2020Article
- Effects of BDNF Val66Met polymorphisms on brain structures and behaviors in adolescents with conduct disorder.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2020Article
- Association between brain morphometry and aerobic fitness level and sex in healthy emerging adults.PloS one · 2020Article
- Neuroimaging, neuromodulation, and population health: the neuroscience of chronic disease prevention.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2018Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Aerobic exercise has been shown to impact brain structure and cognition in children and adults. Exercise-induced activation of a growth protein known as brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is thought to contribute to such relationships. To date, however, no study has examined how aerobic fitness relates to cortical brain structure during development and if BDNF genotype moderates these relationships. Using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and FreeSurfer, the current study examined how aerobic fitness relates to volume, thickness, and surface area in 34 male adolescents, 15 to 18 years old. Moreover, we examined if the val66met BDNF genotype moderated these relationships. We hypothesized that aerobic fitness would relate to greater thickness and volumes in frontal, parietal, and motor regions, and that these relationships would be less robust in individuals carrying a Met allele, since this genotype leads to lower BDNF expression. We found that aerobic fitness positively related to right rostral middle frontal cortical volume in all adolescents. However, results also showed BDNF genotype moderated the relationship between aerobic fitness and bilateral medial precuneus surface area, with a positive relationship seen in individuals with the Val/Val allele, but no relationship detected in those adolescents carrying a Met allele. Lastly, using self-reported levels of aerobic activity, we found that higher-fit adolescents showed larger right medial pericalcarine, right cuneus and left precuneus surface areas as compared to their low-fit peers. Our findings suggest that aerobic fitness is linked to cortical brain development in male adolescents, and that more research is warranted to determine how an individual's genes may influence these relationships.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.