Various longitudinal studies report positive effects of physical exercise on cognitive performance in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, most of these studies fail to capture the dynamic nature of the change and interplay of physical fitness and cognition. To overcome this limitation, we employ a hierarchical continuous-time dynamic model to analyze data of a 24-week physical and cognitive dual-task training regime (3 sessions per week) in older adults with AD (N = 17). The model was specified with two fully connected state variables enabling bidirectional effects between physical and cognitive performance over measurement occasions. The results show that physical performance is dynamically linked to cognitive performance. In line with earlier findings, higher physical performance predicted improved memory recognition performance in terms of faster reaction times.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

DRKS registration number: DRKS00019105

The project (ID: ZS/2016/05/78611) belongs to the Research Association Autonomy in old Age (AiA) funded by the European Union (ERDF-European Regional Development Fund) and the State of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.

I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained.

Yes

The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:

The ethics committee of the Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany gave ethical approval for this work (approval number: 68/17).

I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals.

Yes

I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).

Yes

I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable.

Yes

All data produced in the present study are available upon reasonable request to the authors