Scherrer, Selin Egger, Sven Liu, Xinyu Wick, Anna Zoé Rasch, Björn Xin, Lijing Lauber, Benedikt Taube, Wolfgang 2026 As populations age worldwide, pathological neurodegeneration with subsequent cognitive decline has emerged as a pressing public health challenge. As effective treatments remain limited once neurodegeneration has occurred, prevention and delay of decline onset are crucial. While physical exercise is associated with improved cognition, exercise-specific mechanisms remain unclear. We therefore examined the effects of 12 weeks explosive lower-body resistance training (RT) in community-dwelling older adults on proposed markers associated with brain metabolism and sleep. Thirty-six participants (64–81 years) completed pre and post assessments consisting of sensorimotor lactate and N-acetylaspartate (NAA) levels via 7 T magnetic resonance spectroscopy (analyzable lactate data: n = 24; NAA: n = 32), objective sleep architecture with wearable polysomnography (n = 34), and subjective sleep quality of the recorded nights with the revised sleep questionnaire A (n = 25) as well as of the preceding 4 weeks with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (n = 36). Participants were assigned to RT (3 sessions per week) or a control group (CON; maintaining lifestyle). After significant Group × Time interactions via repeated-measures ANCOVA with sex as covariate, paired t-tests revealed that RT significantly (p < 0.05) reduced resting lactate concentration (d = 0.78), improved objective sleep efficiency (d = 0.75), and prolonged total sleep time (d = 0.61). Our findings suggest that resistance training may be particularly beneficial for older adults experiencing fragmented sleep and impaired neural oxidative metabolism. application/pdf https://folia.unifr.ch/global/documents/336718 https://folia.unifr.ch/documents/336718/files/s11357-026-02519-x.pdf https://folia.unifr.ch/documents/336718/files/11357_2026_2519_moesm1_esm1.docx eng https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11357-026-02519-x info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1007/s11357-026-02519-x info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/issn/2509-2723 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess CC BY GeroScience. - Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2026 Healthy aging Sleep quality Brain metabolism Resistance training Exercise intervention info:eu-repo/classification/udc/616 Reduced sensorimotor lactate concentration and improved sleep efficiency following resistance training in older adults http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501