Sports Augmented Cognitive Benefits: An fMRI Study of Executive Function with Go/NoGo Task.

Qingguo Ding,Hongqiang Zhang,Jie Chen,Wenbin Shen,Yingli Li,Lina Huang,Farzaneh Dehghani,Xiaowei Yin,Juan Du,Zhen Qian,Qin Li,Pei Liang,Fushun Wang

doi:10.1155/2021/7476717

Abstract

Exercise is believed to have significant cognitive benefits. Although an array of experimental paradigms have been employed to test the cognitive effects on exercising individuals, the mechanism as to how exercise induces cognitive benefits in the brain remains unclear. This study explores the effect of dynamic neural network processing with the classic Go/NoGo task with regular exercisers. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to analyze the brain activation of areas involved in executive function, especially inhibitory control. Nineteen regular joggers and twenty-one subjects as a control group performed the task, and their brain imaging data were analyzed. The results showed that at the attentive visual period, the frontal and parietal areas, including the prefrontal cortex, putamen, thalamus, lingual, fusiform, and caudate, were significantly enhanced in positive activities than the control group. On the other hand, in the following inhibitory control processing period, almost the same areas of the brains of the exercise group have shown stronger negative activation in comparison to the control group. Such dynamic temporal response patterns indicate that sports augment cognitive benefits; i.e., regular jogging increases the brain's visual attention and inhibitory control capacities.

Highlights

Exercise is getting increasingly popular, and it has become one of the significant designators to indicate one’s social status
No significant difference was observed in the gender, age, and education years (t-test, both p > 0:05) among the subjects of the exercise group and the control group
The results have shown that, compared with the control group, the exercisers’ brain activation of the frontal and center parietal lobes has been positively enhanced during attentive visual perception (Figure 1, Table 2)

Summary

Introduction

Exercise is getting increasingly popular, and it has become one of the significant designators to indicate one’s social status. Variant cognitive task paradigms have been applied to explore the relationship between exercise and the brain’s cognitive function, such as executive function [1], attention [2], and memory [3]. The elderly subjects with higher aerobic exercise have the greater gray matter capacity of the prefrontal cortex and larger gray matter volume, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) [4]. They improved attention and memory and performed better in the Stroop and Spatial Working Memory (SPWM) tasks. Exercise training can increase the individual’s exercise adaptability and improve cognitive performance, especially in perception speed and executive control [5]. Independent of ages, a similar performance effect has been observed in the adult population for the enhanced inhibition control and the reevaluation of cognitive ability [6]

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Methods

Conclusion