Behavioral and ERP Correlates of Long-Term Physical and Mental Training on a Demanding Switch Task.

Pablo I Burgos,Ignacia Rojas-Sepúlveda,Teresa Hawkes,Gabriela Cruz,Marjorie Woollacott

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.569025

Pablo I Burgos, Ignacia Rojas-Sepúlveda + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.569025

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Abstract

Physical and mental training are associated with positive effects on executive functions throughout the lifespan. However, evidence of the benefits of combined physical and mental regimes over a sedentary lifestyle remain sparse. The goal of this study was to investigate potential mechanisms, from a source-resolved event-related-potential perspective, that could explain how practicing long-term physical and mental exercise can benefit neural processing during the execution of an attention switching task. Fifty-three healthy community volunteers who self-reported long-term practice of Tai Chi (n = 10), meditation + exercise (n = 16), simple aerobics (n = 15), or a sedentary lifestyle (n = 12), aged 47.8 ± 14.6 (SD) were included in this analysis. All participants undertook high-density electroencephalography recording during a switch paradigm. Our results indicate that people who practice physical and mental exercise perform better in a task-switching paradigm. Our analysis revealed an additive effect of the combined practice of physical and mental exercise over physical exercise only. In addition, we confirmed the participation of frontal, parietal and cingulate areas as generators of event-related-potential components (N2-like and P3-like) commonly associated to the performance of switch tasks. Particularly, the N2-like component of the parietal and frontal domains showed significantly greater amplitudes in the exercise and mental training groups compared with aerobics and sedentary groups. Furthermore, we showed better performance associated with greater N2-like amplitudes. Our multivariate analysis revealed that activity type was the most relevant factor to explain the difference between groups, with an important influence of age, and body mass index, and with small effects of educational years, cardiovascular capacity, and sex. These results suggest that chronic combined physical and mental training may confer significant benefits to executive function in normally aging adults, probably through more efficient early attentional processing. Future experimental studies are needed to confirm our results and understand the mechanisms on parieto-frontal networks that contribute to the cognitive improvement associated with practicing combined mental and aerobic exercise, while carefully controlling confounding factors, such as age and body mass index.

Highlights

Research studies on the benefits of physical and mental training have shown a positive effect on cognitive function throughout the lifespan (Kramer et al, 1999; Chan and Woollacott, 2007; Weinstein et al, 2012; Hawkes et al, 2014a)
The Tai Chi (TC) group had higher body mass index (BMI) compared to the Meditation + Exercise (MEDe) and Aerobic fittness (AER) groups (p = 0.005 and p = 0.017, respectively)
We will describe the results in three subsections, to clearly report how aerobic only or combined aerobic plus mental regimes affect neural processing during an attention switch task: (1) First, we describe whether a combined mental-physical training program or an aerobic regime showed any differences over a SED regime alone

Summary

Introduction

Research studies on the benefits of physical and mental training have shown a positive effect on cognitive function throughout the lifespan (Kramer et al, 1999; Chan and Woollacott, 2007; Weinstein et al, 2012; Hawkes et al, 2014a). Though research studies on the individual effects of physical and mental training report improvement in cognitive function, research on combined physical and mental training—such as Tai Chi, dancing, sports, and other exercise disciplines that combine the simultaneous practice of cognition + moderate exercise—suggests increased benefits compared to exercise that does not require attention, planning, memory or other cognitive challenge (Matthews and Williams, 2008; Voss et al, 2009; Anderson-Hanley et al, 2012; Maillot et al, 2012; Hawkes et al, 2014a; Wayne et al, 2014; Zhu et al, 2016; Raichlen and Alexander, 2017). More research is needed to elucidate how physical and mental exercise affects the neural processes underlying cognitive function (Bamidis et al, 2014; Raichlen and Alexander, 2017)

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