Abstract
BackgroundThe beneficial effects of acute exercise on executive function have been well-documented, but the influence of cardiorespiratory fitness on this effect requires further investigations, especially using imaging technique. This study aimed to examine the effects of cardiorespiratory fitness on acute exercise-induced changes on behavioral performance and on functional brain activation.MethodBased on their cardiorespiratory fitness level, 62 participants ranked in the top and bottom of the maximum oxygen consumption (VO2 max) were finally selected and allocated to high-fit group or low-fit group. Both groups were asked to complete the Stroop task after 30 min of aerobic exercise and chair-seated rest (control session). Among them, 26 participants were randomly selected and asked to undergo the Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).ResultsBehavioral results showed that individuals responded significantly faster after exercise than those in the control session. The fMRI results revealed a significant interaction effects of Group by Session in brain regions including anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and bilateral dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). For the ACC, activation in the high-fit group was significantly decreased after aerobic exercise compared to those in the control session; whereas an increased activation was noticed in the low-fit group. Regarding to the bilateral DLPFC, activation in high-fit group was significantly decreased after exercise compared to those in the control session, while no significant differences were found in the low-fit group. In addition, for the post-exercise session, a significant positive correlations between activation of the ACC and left DLPFC in the high-fit group was observed. There was a significant negative correlation between activation of the ACC and reaction time in the congruent condition after exercise in the low-fit group.ConclusionFindings further clarify the neurophysiological processes of acute exercise-induced changes in cognitive performance as they suggest that cardiorespiratory fitness is an important factor which influences changes in brain activation patterns in response to acute aerobic exercises.
Highlights
It has been reported that cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) level is related to the performance in executive function (EF) (Colcombe and Kramer, 2003; Chang et al, 2012; Kramer and Colcombe, 2018) and several studies observed that higher levels of CRF are linked to better performance in EFs (Dupuy et al, 2015; Scott et al, 2016; Mekari et al, 2019)
12 HF participants who underwent the fMRI had significantly higher VO2max than those in 12 LF participants [49.16 ± 1.88 ml/kg/min > 42.52 ± 0.99 ml/kg/min, t(22) = 10.79, p < 0.001]. Such results indicate that the HF group had a better CRF level as compared to the LF group, which further confirms that the grouping based on CRF level was appropriate in this study
Given that the high accuracy was observed across all conditions, reaction time (RT) was selected for subsequent analyses
Summary
The beneficial effects of acute exercise have been well documented in the literature for various cognitive domains such as memory (Etnier et al, 2016; Dilley et al, 2019; Loprinzi et al, 2019; Waters et al, 2020; Zou et al, 2020), attention (Chang et al, 2017; de Sousa et al, 2019), and executive function (EF) (Verburgh et al, 2014; Chang et al, 2017) and even under hypoxia (Jung et al, 2020). Some research findings suggest that individuals with a higher level of CRF benefited more from acute aerobic exercise than those with a relative low CRF level (Chang et al, 2015a; Hogan et al, 2015; Tsai et al, 2016). The available evidence suggests that it is still not fully clear whether the effects of acute exercises on EF are influenced by the individual CRF level. The beneficial effects of acute exercise on executive function have been well-documented, but the influence of cardiorespiratory fitness on this effect requires further investigations, especially using imaging technique. This study aimed to examine the effects of cardiorespiratory fitness on acute exercise-induced changes on behavioral performance and on functional brain activation
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