Abstract
Acute bouts of exercise have been shown to improve fine motor control performance and to facilitate motor memory consolidation processes in young adults. Exercise effects might be reflected in EEG task-related power (TRPow) decreases in the beta band (13–30 Hz) as an indicator of active motor processing. This study aimed to investigate those effects in healthy older adults. Thirty-eight participants (65–74 years of age) were assigned to an experimental (EG, acute exercise) or a control group (CG, rest). Fine motor control was assessed using a precision grip force modulation (FM) task. FM performance and EEG were measured at (1) baseline (immediately before acute exercise/rest), (2) during practice sessions immediately after, (3) 30 minutes, and (4) 24 hours (FM only) after exercise/rest. A marginal significant effect indicated that EG revealed more improvement in fine motor performance immediately after exercise than CG after resting. EG showed enhanced consolidation of short-term and long-term motor memory, whereas CG revealed only a tendency for short-term motor memory consolidation. Stronger TRPow decreases were revealed immediately after exercise in the contralateral frontal brain area as compared to the control condition. This finding indicates that acute exercise might enhance cortical activation and thus, improves fine motor control by enabling healthy older adults to better utilize existing frontal brain capacities during fine motor control tasks after exercise. Furthermore, acute exercise can act as a possible intervention to enhance motor memory consolidation in older adults.
Highlights
Fine motor control performance declines with increasing age [1], affecting activities of daily and professional life [2]
Performance of EEG signal (EG) and control group (CG) was similar at preintervention, differed immediately after intervention, and converged after the initial learning phase and motor memory consolidation
This study examined the effect of an acute exercise session on (1) behavioral performance and learning in a precision grip force modulation (FM) task as well as on (2) the electrophysiological correlates of FM task performance and learning in healthy older adults
Summary
Fine motor control performance declines with increasing age [1], affecting activities of daily and professional life [2]. Acute bouts of cardiovascular exercise facilitate neuroplasticity in the primary motor cortex (M1) and enhance corticospinal excitability [8]. These effects are not specific to lower extremity motor areas and muscles engaged during exercise and apparent in motor areas responsible for upper limbs, indicating that exercise has a generalized effect on M1 [9, 10]. Several studies have investigated the effect of acute exercise on upper extremity visuomotor performance as well as acute exercise as a possible intervention to trigger motor consolidation processes in healthy young adults [11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18]. Previous studies were inconsistent with respect to the time points of measurement, definition of motor performance/learning, and respective results, and were conducted only with young adults
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
