What does a body good is also good for the mind. That’s the upshot of new research that shows exercise staves off age-related declines in brain function, mental ability, and memory.

The findings, by University of Illinois scientists, suggests higher levels of cardiovascular and respiratory fitness in older adults leads to better executive function in the brain, which helps with reasoning and problem solving.

What’s more the research, published in the journal in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, indicates higher levels of physical fitness increase brain volume in key brain regions.

"Previous studies have shown that there's a relationship between cardiorespiratory fitness and behavioral performance in older adults," said Chelsea Wong, M.D., who helped conduct the study. “Other studies have looked at cardiorespiratory fitness and brain function, but really linking all three of those hasn't been quite been done as explicitly as we did in this paper.

To reach their conclusions, researchers examined brain images and fitness levels of 128 adults between the ages of 59 and 80 years.

The team found the overall relationship between cardiorespiratory fitness levels and higher executive function may be partially explained through activation in a region of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex and the supplementary motor area — regions tied higher level functions, such as conflict monitoring, multitasking, and learning.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.