This study examined whether regular swimming in older adults was related to better cognitive functioning and whether there were any global or selective positive effects of this physical activity (PA) on cognition. The cognitive performances of three groups of sixteen volunteer participants (young adults, sedentary older adults, and older adults who regularly practice swimming) were evaluated using a multitask approach. All participants performed a battery of ten tasks: two reaction time tasks assessing information processing speed and eight experimental tasks assessing three executive functions (EFs), (behavioral inhibition, working memory updating, and cognitive flexibility). The results showed that young adults performed significantly better than older adults on all examined cognitive functions. However, in older adults, regular swimming was related to better performance on the three EFs, but not on information processing speed. More precisely, five experimental tasks out of the eight tapping EFs were shown to be sensitive to positive effects from swimming practice. Finally, the demonstrated benefits of swimming on EFs were not necessarily linked to better cardiorespiratory fitness. The present findings illustrate the validity of using a multitask approach in examining the potential benefits of regular PA on cognitive aging. 1. Introduction The growth of the proportion of the population aged 65 and older in the industrialized world, as well as in developing countries, has profound implications for public health and the economic costs of medical care. Cerebral and cognitive decline, as a function of aging, represents a predominant cause of autonomy loss in aging populations. According to the prefrontal-executive theory [1], executive functions (EFs) and their underpinning prefrontal and frontal brain structures are particularly sensitive to the effects of normal and pathological aging [2, 3]. Therefore, the preservation of these brain areas and their associated cognitive functions is of particular importance. Chronic physical activity (PA), aimed at improving cardiorespiratory health, has been proposed to be a good, practical, and powerful candidate to overcome cerebral and behavioral declines [4–6]. Accordingly, the principal aim of the present study was to examine the potential benefits of an understudied form of PA—regular swimming (one of the most popular and accessible forms of PA for older adults)—on EF performance in a population aged 65 to 80 years old. Executive functions involve higher-order functions of control and coordination allowing
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