Abstract
A wealth of evidence has shown that a single bout of aerobic exercise can facilitate executive function. However, none of current studies on this topic have addressed whether the magnitude of the acute-exercise benefit on executive function and oculomotor performance is influenced by different aerobic exercise modes. The present study was thus aimed toward an investigation of the acute effects of high-intensity interval exercise (HIIE) vs. moderate-intensity continuous exercise (MICE) on executive-related oculomotor performance in healthy late middle-aged and older adults. Using a within-subject design, twenty-two participants completed a single bout of 30 min of HIIE, MICE, or a non-exercise-intervention (REST) session in a counterbalanced order. The behavioral [e.g., reaction times (RTs), coefficient of variation (CV) of the RT], and oculomotor (e.g., saccade amplitude, saccade latency, and saccadic peak velocity) indices were measured when participants performed antisaccade and prosaccade tasks prior to and after an intervention mode. The results showed that a 30-min single-bout of HIIE and MICE interventions shortened the RTs in the antisaccade task, with the null effect on the CV of the RT in the late middle-aged and older adults. In terms of oculomotor metrics, although the two exercise modes could not modify the performance in terms of saccade amplitudes and saccade latencies, the participants’ saccadic peak velocities while performing the oculomotor paradigm were significantly altered only following an acute HIIE intervention. The present findings suggested that a 30-min single-bout of HIIE and MICE interventions modulated post-exercise antisaccade control on behavioral performance (e.g., RTs). Nevertheless, the HIIE relative MICE mode appears to be a more effective aerobic exercise in terms of oculomotor control (e.g., saccadic peak velocities) in late middle-aged and older adults.
Highlights
Executive functions, referring to top-down cognitive processes, include three core components: response inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and working memory (Diamond, 2013)
Since the main purpose in the present study aimed to investigate the acute effects of moderate intensity continuous exercise (MICE) and High-intensity interval exercise (HIIE) interventions on executive-related oculomotor performance in the participants when performing the prosaccade and antisaccade tasks and, importantly, previous studies demonstrated that acute aerobic exercise with moderate and intense instensities could not produce a significant main effect on the “target eccentricity by intervention mode” interaction in the young and older adults (Samani and Heath, 2018; Petrella et al, 2019), for increasing the statistical power of the analyses, dependent variables were submitted separately to a three-way mixed-model ANOVA, with the following factors: 3 (Intervention mode: MICE vs. HIIE vs. relative to those seen in the non-exercise-intervention (REST)) × 2 (Time: pre-intervention vs. post-intervention) × 2 (Task: prosaccade vs. antisaccade)
The mean BMI values in the late middle-aged and older adults fell into the overweight category based on WHO criteria for Asian populations obtained from the Western Pacific Regional Office (Tsai et al, 2017a, 2019b), they exhibited enough physical activity levels (Sallis et al, 1985) and physical fitness (Liskustyawati et al, 2020) to perform the acute HIIE and MICE interventions with lower potential risk factors
Summary
Executive functions, referring to top-down cognitive processes, include three core components: response inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and working memory (Diamond, 2013) Such complex cognitive abilities enable an individual to independently perform complex, goal-directed, and self-serving activities (e.g., problem solving and inhibition of irrelevant processing) (Lezak et al, 2004). In terms of cognitive electrophysiological performance, Kamijo et al (2009) found that, as compared to the baseline session, event-related potential (ERP) P3 latency was significantly shorter following a bout of light or moderate aerobic exercise in older adults when performing a Flanker task. Exercise intensity could be one of potential moderators of singlebout post-exercise executive benefits
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