Abstract
Cognitive gains are reported to be induced by acute aerobic exercise, but the role of fitness in the effect of acute aerobic exercise on executive function remains unknown. Therefore, we aimed to examine the effect of fitness on acute exercise-induced changes in executive function from neural mechanism approach. Twenty-four female college students were assigned to high-fitness or low-fitness groups based on their cardiovascular fitness level, and then underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing N-back tasks before and after 30 min of acute exercise. The behavioral results revealed significant interaction effects of group by time in the 0-back and 1-back tasks, but not in the 2-back task. The accuracy was significantly higher in the high-fitness group than in the low-fitness group before exercise in the 1-back and 2-back tasks. At the neural level, significant interaction effects of group by time were observed in all tasks. The 0-back and 1-back tasks activated the right cerebellum while the 2-back task activated subcortical regions. Our findings suggest that fitness moderates the effect of aerobic exercise on cognitive function, and provide the first neural evidence to support the influence of fitness on exercise-induced cognitive performance.
Highlights
A growing body of literature has documented that a single session of aerobic exercise could improve cognitive performance (Hillman et al, 2008), which could be observed in children and adolescents (Hillman et al, 2009; Hogan et al, 2015), and in older adults (Chang et al, 2015)
Our findings suggest that fitness moderates the effect of aerobic exercise on cognitive function, and provide the first neural evidence to support the influence of fitness on exercise-induced cognitive performance
The high-fitness group exhibited greater activation of the left globus pallidus (LGP) than did the low-fitness group after exercise. This group exhibited greater activation of the LGP after exercise relative to that before exercise. These findings demonstrated that the LGP is another key brain region that exhibits exerciseinduced activity that is affected by fitness level
Summary
A growing body of literature has documented that a single session of aerobic exercise could improve cognitive performance (Hillman et al, 2008), which could be observed in children and adolescents (Hillman et al, 2009; Hogan et al, 2015), and in older adults (Chang et al, 2015). Some studies observed differences in executive function between high-fit individuals and low-fit individuals following acute aerobic exercises (Buck et al, 2008; Hogan et al, 2013; Chang et al, 2015; Chu et al, 2017). Three hundred and forty-nine older adults who were assigned into three different fitness level groups based on their peak maximal oxygen consumption (VO2) for 6 years and observed significant group differences in cognitive ability including executive function, verbal memory, and verbal fluency. Poorer baseline cardiorespiratory fitness was related to poorer performance on all cognitive tasks even 6 years later (Barnes et al, 2003)
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