A study in the Journal of Movement Disorders on patients with Parkinson’s disease has found a relationship between sedentary living and attention difficulty. Exercise is the age old medicine, with many studies proving the cognitive benefits of moderate to vigorous activity for cognitive health for patients with Parkinson’s. However, while cognitive decline and issues with memory loss, impulse control, and difficulty with attention are typical of the disease, the researchers found there was no published research measuring how sedentary behavior specifically relates to the cognitive symptoms. Specifically for patients with Parkinson’s, mobility can be increasingly difficult, and exercise inaccessible. This small pilot study is the first to show the flip side and specifically find a correlation between lack of activity, a common effect of Parkinson’s symptoms, and its effect on cognitive functioning.

Parkinson’s disease is a rare neurological disorder which affects movement and the central nervous system. The disease is progressive, usually beginning with mild symptoms like a slight tremor and eventually reaching more incapacitating symptoms such as loss of balance, slowness, difficulty or the inability to walk, loss of movement, speech difficulty, and eventually hallucinations and dementia. The disease tends to effect people later in life, with the onset of symptoms usually appearing after age 50. While there’s not an exact cause known, it’s known to be correlated to environmental triggers, genetic factors, and the presence of the protein ‘dewy body’ in the neuron.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh used various measures to track the physical activity of 17 patients over the course of 10 days. They measured the patient’s physical activity via a Sensewear Pro armband which tracks various aspects of health including calories burned and quality of sleep. Afterwards they also assessed various measures of cognitive functioning by the Parkinson’s Disease-Cognitive Rating Scale, an assessment typically given to measure patient’s memory, attention, and verbal fluency.  They also garnered data with further measure of patient’s ability to flexibly switch tasks. While they measured a whole host of cognitive abilities, they found that only attention is correlated with sedentary living, while the other measures of cognitive decline specifically related to Parkinson’s.

Of course, exercise and lack of physical activity are known to relate to mental health, undeniably effecting cognition. However, the study wrote, “These results suggest that, relative to other aspects of cognition, sedentary behavior may be independently related to attention over and above MVPA [moderate-o-vigorous activity] in individuals.”

However, the study included some patients that were completely inactive, often due to the state of their conditions. For this reason, researchers warned that their results need a second look in order to determine how much of the correlation is causation. They note though that the findings suggest not only uptakes in physical activity, but also specific efforts to reduce sedentary time.