Differences in cognitive aspects between seniors physical exercises practicing and non practising

Objective To compare de cognitive development of the seniors that practice and the one that doesn’t practice physical exercises. Methods This transversal study was made with 104 senior citizens, 64 belonging to the physical exercises Practicing Group (G1) and 40 belonging to the Non Practicing Group (G2), registered on Health Centers. It was a applied a Mini Exam of Mental Health (MEEM) to assess the cognitive health and a record for the characterize the sample. Afterwards, it was applied a Battery of Cognitive Computerized Evaluation (CogState) to assess the cognitive development of the senior citizens. There was utilized the U Mann Whitney test to compare the groups and the computation of the measure of effect d of Cohen, to verify if the practice of physical exercise influence on the cognitive development. To the descriptive assessment there was utilized data expressed in average, standard deviation, median and percentage. There was accepted the level of significance of 5%. Results The score on the MEEM have presented statistically significant differences between the groups. About the cognitive development, mensured by CogState, the groups diverged significantly to all the analyzed variables, presenting the G1 the best performance on the time tests of time and simple reaction, of choice and assisted attention; on the other hand, the G2 had better performance on the tests of short time memory and work. Conclusions Senior citizens practicing physical exercises have better performance for simple reaction time, choice reaction time and assisted care, when compared to older non-practicing.