Often with seniors, aging negatively impacts their well-being. Loss of quality sleep, impaired motor control, and cognitive disorders are frequent ailments. For the first time, a team of scientists led by Dr. Yves-Alain Kuhn and Prof. Wolfgang Taube of the University of Fribourg, has been able to demonstrate that physical training focused on balance can counteract one of the dysfunctions that are the root cause of these pathologies.

It’s well known that aging brings its own procession of aches and pains, decline and disorders that can include reduced muscle strength, impaired cognitive functions, a decrease in the quality of sleep, and greater difficulty managing pain. These disorders, which sometimes have a severe effect on the quality of life, can be explained in particular by the dysfunction of a single neurotransmitter, gamma-aminobutyrique acid (GABA). There is good news, though. Certain specific physical exercises can curb this negative development. This is what Dr. Yves-Alain Kuhn, a senior researcher at the Faculty of Science and Medicine at the University of Fribourg, and his colleagues at several German universities have demonstrated. The encouraging results of their research were published in 2024 in The Journal of Physiology.

Braking news
Our brain is made up of billions of neurons that are in constant communication with each other. Their role is to ensure the transmission of messages by means of chemicals (molecules) known as neurotransmitters. It is this communication system that allows us, for example, to remove our hand from a hot plate in a few milliseconds. The role played by the GABA neurotransmitter mentioned above is to prevent certain nerve messages from going too far or producing too strong an effect. It acts as a kind of brake that allows the brain to avoid an overload of activities. This role as a brake, which functions in the motor cortex (the area that controls bodily movements), goes by the impressive name of GABAergic intracortical inhibition.

“With age this inhibition loses its effectiveness,” Dr. Kuhn explained, “and it is this dysfunction that is the root of a number of problems, in particular balance disorders and the loss of motor control in seniors. Curiously, in children too, this inhibition is naturally less developed, which sometimes contributes to more disordered movements when children are beginning to learn to move. This inhibitor ability reaches its peak in adulthood, then gradually declines over time. However, scientists still do not know whether targeted interventions could prevent or slow down this decline.”

Effective exercises
It is this mystery then that the team of scientists led by Dr. Kuhn sought to unravel. To carry out their study, the researchers divided a selection of 40 volunteers between 66 and 81 years old into two groups. In the first, 20 seniors did balance-training exercises at a rate of two one-hour sessions per week, led by Franziska Peier, while the second served as a control group.

The seniors in the first group had to do increasingly difficult exercises like walking on an unstable surface such as cushions, or on a wobble board, or even a slackline. After six months, the team of scientists observed significant improvement in intracortical inhibition (+ 16.5%) and balance performance (+ 15%) in the first group compared with the control group. “We have been able to demonstrate then – and for the first time – that healthy elderly people are capable of acting on the famous decline in age-related intracortical inhibition, a process that is not inevitable then,” the researcher cheerily noted. “Physical activity can therefore serve as a powerful tool for restoring excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters, even at a more advanced age.”

Future research
The study was conducted in a very specific context, i.e., balance exercises. In the future, Dr. Kuhn and his colleagues would like to follow the effects of doing balance exercises on other situations, especially in terms of sleep or painful stimuli. The researcher added, “For us, it is a question not only of verifying whether the increase in intracortical inhibition can occur in other brain states, but also of observing the effects on the quality of sleep and perception of pain.”

Studie
Kuhn, Y.-A., Egger, S., Bugnon, M., Lehmann, N., Taubert, M., & Taube, W. (2024). Age-related decline in GABAergic intracortical inhibition can be counteracted by long-term learning of balance skills. The Journal of Physiology, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.1113/JP285706

The main points in brief

• Age causes the decline of GABAergic intracortical inhibition, a process that is responsible for several pathologies (motor disorders, Parkinson’s, sleep disorders, etc.).
• Scientists still do not know whether there are ways to slow this decline, which is harmful to the well-being of seniors.
• The present study has demonstrated for the first time that six months of balance training can indeed slow the decline of GABAergic intracortical inhibition.