Abstract
Endurance exercise improves cardiovascular and musculoskeletal function and may also increase the information processing capacities of the brain. Animal and human research from the past decade demonstrated widespread exercise effects on brain structure and function at the systems-, cellular-, and molecular level of brain organization. These neurobiological mechanisms may explain the well-established positive influence of exercise on performance in various behavioral domains but also its contribution to improved skill learning and neuroplasticity. With respect to the latter, only few empirical and theoretical studies are available to date. The aim of this review is (i) to summarize the existing neurobiological and behavioral evidence arguing for endurance exercise-induced improvements in motor learning and (ii) to develop hypotheses about the mechanistic link between exercise and improved learning. We identify major knowledge gaps that need to be addressed by future research projects to advance our understanding of how exercise should be organized to optimize motor learning.
Highlights
The optimization of motor learning is of particular relevance in many sport-related settings such as competitive sports, disease prevention, rehabilitation after neurological or orthopedic injury as well as physical education
A huge body of literature in movement and training science proposes strategies to optimize motor skill learning with a strong emphasis on practice distribution, scheduling, variation of motor tasks as well as movement feedback or attentional focus (Magill, 2011; Schmidt and Lee, 2014)
For transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), exercise-induced changes were found for corticospinal excitability, long-term potentiation (LTP)-like plasticity and functional connectivity immediately or some minutes after the exercise interventions while structural MRI studies assessed lasting changes in gray and white matter after weeks to months of exercise
Summary
The optimization of motor learning is of particular relevance in many sport-related settings such as competitive sports, disease prevention, rehabilitation after neurological or orthopedic injury as well as physical education. TDCS of the primary motor cortex (M1) has been shown to increase long-term potentiation-like (LTP-like) plasticity or improve motor memory retention (Reis et al, 2008, 2009). Physical exercise facilitates long-term potentiation (LTP)-like plasticity in M1 (Singh et al, 2014b) and increases the level of learningrelated neurotrophins (Rojas Vega et al, 2006). To understand how exercise may enhance motor learning and neuroplasticity, it is important to characterize the neural correlates of motor learning
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