PB 9 Exercise increases right motor cortex volume in a VBM-study of a representative cohort

Objective Training can induce morphological changes in primary sensorimotor areas of the human brain. These effects can be found in both professional musicians ( Kleber et al., 2016 ) and professional athletes ( Hanggi et al., 2015 , Huang et al., 2015 ). Nevertheless, even regular physical activity in non-professionals can induce morphological changes of the brain’s grey matter volume (GMV; Killgore et al., 2013 ). However, studies for large cohorts addressing this topic are absent. The Study of Health in Pomerania (SHIP) has a representative cohort with large sample sizes. With its longitudinal design, it has ideal preconditions to investigate also the long-term effects of physical activity on the GMV of the human brain. Furthermore, as the activity is self-reported and there is no specific training, there is presumably more general relevance for the average population. We therefore thought to investigate the possible effect on GMV associated with the amount of exercise per week in a representative cohort study which included a high resolution T1- weighted brain image suitable for voxel based morphometry (VBM). Methods We analysed 1257 individuals identified from SHIP-Trend-0, a population based cohort study, all of whom had undergone whole body MRI scanning and reported on their weekly physical activity via questionnaire. T1-weighted images were acquired with MRI (1.5T). Preprocessing was done in SPM/VBM8 and included a nonlinear modulation. Results therefore represent differences in regional GM volume after correcting for individual head size. Statistical analyses were performed separately for men ( n  = 582) and women ( n  = 675). We compared those doing more than one hour of exercise per week (group 1, G1; men: n  = 361, women: n  = 428) to those exercising less than one hour per week (group 2, G2; men: n  = 221, women: n  = 247) using a two-sample t -test in SPM12. Participant’s age was defined as a covariate and statistical thresholding of FWE, p Results For MRI, we found expected differences in GMV in comparison of G1 with G2 in the group of men. Those regularly exercising had a significantly greater right M1 grey matter volume ( p (FWE) = .002; t  = 4.85; MNI-coordinates x  = 36, y  = −19, z  = 39; Fig. 1 ). No effects were observed in the female group. Conclusion Based on a large representative cohort, our findings underline the results of previously published studies comparing professional athletes (handball, gymnasts) with non-professionals in the non-dominant hemisphere ( Hanggi et al., 2015 , Huang et al., 2015 ). Differences in musician’s brains also tend to focus on the right hemisphere ( Kleber et al., 2016 ). For the future, our objective is to investigate how physical activity influences the human’s GMV on a long-term run.