The immediate and sustained effects of acute exercise on planning aspect of executive function

doi:10.1016/j.psychsport.2013.05.004

Psychology of Sport and Exercise

Volume 14, Issue 5, September 2013, Pages 728-736

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2013.05.004 Get rights and content

Highlights

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Acute exercise improves planning aspects of executive function immediately after exercise.
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Planning improvement following exercise cessation was presented for up to 80 min.
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Arousal, BDNF, and cerebral blood flow are potential mechanisms for the immediate facilitation.
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Few explanations have been proposed for the sustained facilitative effect.

Abstract

Objective

The purpose of this study was to clarify the immediate and sustained effects of an acute bout of exercise on the planning aspects of executive function.

Design

This study used a 2 × 4 true experimental design.

Method

Forty participants were randomly assigned to either the exercise or control groups and completed the Tower of London task prior to, immediately following, 30 min after, and 60 min after cessation of a 30 min, moderate intensity cycling exercise.

Results

Acute exercise positively impacted the total move score, which reflects planning efficiency, immediately after the cessation of exercise. Acute exercise also led to longer total initiation times, which were linked to better response inhibition of planning at 30 and 60 min after the cessation of exercise.

Conclusion

Acute exercise benefits planning, and the types of planning and the time points at which they were assessed modulate the relationship between acute exercise and executive function. Exercise-induced physiological and biological fluctuations have been proposed to explain the effects present immediately after exercise, and the mechanisms of such effects warrant further exploration.

Section snippets

Participants

Forty college-aged participants (male: n = 23, mean age = 22.57 ± 1.88 years; female: n = 17, mean age = 23.53 ± 2.00 years) were recruited via flyers from the Taoyuan community in Taiwan. Participants were eligible once they passed health and risk screening tests and filled out a Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire (PAR-Q) to ensure they could safely complete the experimental processes. The experiment followed the American College of Sports Medicine guidelines for conducting exercise (

Potential confounding factors

Details of participants' demographics and potential confounding factors are presented in Table 1. The chi-squared and independent t-tests revealed no significant differences between the two groups in terms of gender (chi-squared = .1, p > .05), age, education, height, weight, BMI, IPAQ, digit span, and resting or maximal HR (t's (38) = −1.02–.38, p = .31–.95), suggesting homogeneity, as well as appropriate group assignment.

Exercise manipulation and exercise-induced arousal

Results from a 2 × 4 mixed ANOVA revealed that there were main effects

Discussion

The current study used 30 min of cycling exercise at 62% HHR and the Tower of London task to clarify the immediate and sustained effects of acute exercise on the planning aspect of executive function. With appropriate exercise manipulation, the results indicated that an acute bout of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise positively influenced performance on the Tower of London task. It should be noted that the sub-indices of the Tower of London task at the various time points were modulated by

Acknowledgement

The research was supported in part by grants from the National Science Council, Taiwan (NSC 100-2628-H-179-001 and NSC 101-2628-H-179-002). We gratefully acknowledge all participants for the time they spent in performing the study.

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Effects of volume-matched acute exercise on metacognition in late middle-aged adults: The roles of exercise intensity and duration
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Increasing studies have observed the benefit of acute exercise on core executive functions (EFs). However, the effects of high-order EFs (i.e., metacognition) are poorly investigated. Additionally, the beneficial effect varies depending on exercise-related variables (e.g., intensity, duration). Exercise volume, represented by exercise intensity and duration, is one approach to examine the relationship between acute exercise and metacognition. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effects of acute exercise, involving three volume-matched evaluations, on metacognition in late middle-aged adults. It recruited 40 community-dwelling late middle-aged adults (22 females; M_age = 61.05 ± 4.17 years). Its counterbalanced and repeated-measure experimental design included a control reading session and three exercise sessions: (1) acute moderate-intensity exercise for 30 min, (2) higher-intensity exercise for 16 min, and (3) lower-intensity exercise for 40 min. After each session, all participants were asked to perform the Tower of London (TOL) task to assess their metacognition related to planning and problem-solving. This study showed that regardless of exercise intensity and duration variation, acute exercise led to higher move-related (i.e., total correct and move scores) and time-related (i.e., total executive and problem-solving times) scores but did not affect total initial time and violation-related scores compared to reading treatment. These findings suggest enhanced performance in metacognition after acute exercise regardless of its intensity and duration variation.
Cerebral blood flow and immediate and sustained executive function benefits following single bouts of passive and active exercise
2023, Brain and Cognition
Passive exercise occurs when an individual’s limbs are moved via an external force and is a modality that increases cerebral blood flow (CBF) and provides an immediate postexercise executive function (EF) benefit. To our knowledge, no work has examined for how long passive exercise benefits EF. Here, healthy young adults (N = 22; 7 female) used a cycle ergometer to complete three 20-min conditions: passive exercise (via mechanically driven flywheel), a traditional light intensity (37 W) “active” exercise condition (i.e., via volitional pedalling) and a non-exercise control condition. An estimate of CBF was obtained via transcranial Doppler ultrasound measurement of middle cerebral artery blood velocity (MCAv) and antisaccades (i.e., saccade mirror-symmetrical to a target) were completed prior to and immediately, 30- and 60-min following each condition to assess EF. Passive and active exercise increased MCAv; however, the increase was larger in the latter condition. In terms of antisaccades, passive and active exercise provided an immediate postexercise reaction time benefit. At the 30-min assessment, the benefit was observed for active but not passive exercise and neither produced a benefit at the 60-min assessment. Thus, passive exercise provided an evanescent EF “boost” and is a finding that may reflect a smaller cortical hemodynamic response.
The factor structure of executive function in childhood and adolescence
2022, Intelligence
Citation Excerpt :
However, the specific relation of planning towards the EF construct seems unclear, as it has seldom been included in latent variable analyses of the EF factor structure. Planning has most frequently been investigated in isolation as a stand-alone EF component in studies that also investigate other EF components such as working memory or inhibition (Albert & Steinberg, 2011; Carlson et al., 2004; Hackman, Gallop, Evans, & Farah, 2015; Hung et al., 2013; Nemati et al., 2017). In a small number of cases, planning has been considered in latent variable analysis, where it has mostly been categorized as part of working memory (Cirino et al., 2018) or inhibition (Lehto, Juujarvi, Kooistra, & Pulkkinen, 2003; Welsh, Satterlee-Cartmell, & Stine, 1999).
Executive functioning (EF) plays a major role in many domains of human behaviour, including self-regulation, academic achievement, and even sports expertise. While a significant proportion of cross-sectional research has focused on the developmental pathways of EF, the existing literature is fractionated due to a wide range of methodologies applied to narrow age ranges, impeding comparison across a broad range of age groups. The current study used a cross-sectional design to investigate the factor structure of EF within late childhood and adolescence. A total of 2166 Flemish children and adolescents completed seven tasks of the Cambridge Brain Sciences test battery. Based on the existing literature, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis was performed, which indicated that a unitary factor model provides the best fit for the youngest age group (7–12 years). For the adolescents (12–18 years), the factor structure consists of four different components, including working memory, shifting, inhibition and planning. With regard to differences between early (12–15 years) and late (15–18 years) adolescents, working memory, inhibition and planning show higher scores for the late adolescents, while there was no difference on shifting. The current study is one of the first to administer the same seven EF tests in a considerably large sample of children and adolescents, and as such contributes to the understanding of the developmental trends in EF. Future studies, especially with longitudinal designs, are encouraged to further increase the knowledge concerning the factor structure of EF, and the development of the different EF components.
Exercise intensity-specific changes to cerebral blood velocity do not modulate a postexercise executive function benefit
2021, Neuropsychologia
Citation Excerpt :
In turn, Lambourne and Tomporowski concluded that an executive function benefit is observed up to 15-min postexercise. That said, more recent investigations have found that engaging in acute aerobic and resistance exercise for as little as 10-min improves executive function (Johnson et al., 2016; Samani and Heath, 2018) and that the benefit may persist for upwards of 60-min (Hung et al., 2013; Shukla and Heath, 2021; see also Joyce et al., 2009). Moreover, there is debate as to the mechanism(s) by which exercise improves executive function (Ludyga et al., 2016).
Executive function is transiently improved (i.e., <60-min) following a single bout of aerobic exercise. A candidate mechanism for this improvement is an exercise-mediated increase in cerebral blood flow (CBF). Further, it has been proposed that an increase in CBF across the continuum of increasing exercise intensities improves the magnitude of a postexercise executive function benefit (i.e., drive theory); however, this proposal has not been empirically tested. Here, participants completed four experimental sessions: a V̇O_2peak test to determine cardiorespiratory fitness and estimated lactate threshold (LT), followed by separate 10-min sessions of light- (i.e., 25 W), moderate- (i.e., 80% estimated LT), and heavy-intensity (i.e., 15% of the difference between LT and V̇O_2peak) aerobic exercise. An estimate of CBF during exercise was achieved via transcranial Doppler ultrasound and near-infrared spectroscopy to quantify blood velocity (BV) through the middle cerebral artery and deoxygenated hemoglobin (HHb), respectively. Executive function was assessed before and after each session via the executive-mediated antisaccade task (i.e., saccade mirror-symmetrical to a target). Results demonstrated that BV increased in relation to increasing exercise intensity, whereas HHb decreased by a comparable magnitude independent of intensity. In terms of executive function, null hypothesis and equivalence tests indicated a comparable magnitude postexercise reduction in antisaccade reaction time across exercise intensities. Accordingly, the magnitude of CBF change during exercise does not impact the magnitude of a postexercise executive function benefit.
Effects of exercise intensity and duration at a predetermined exercise volume on executive function among Apolipoprotein E (APOE)-ɛ4 carriers
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A single bout of passive exercise mitigates a mental fatigue-induced inhibitory control deficit
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View all citing articles on Scopus

View full text

The immediate and sustained effects of acute exercise on planning aspect of executive function

Highlights

Abstract

Objective

Design

Method

Results

Conclusion

Section snippets

Participants

Potential confounding factors

Exercise manipulation and exercise-induced arousal

Discussion

Acknowledgement

Neuropsychologia

Acta Psychologica

Acta Psychologica

Neuroscience Letters

Psychology of Sport and Exercise

Brain Research

Neurobiology of Learning and Memory

Brain and Cognition

Physiology and Behavior

Neuroscience

International Journal of Psychophysiology

Brain and Cognition

Clinical Neurophysiology

International Journal of Psychophysiology

Brain Research

Physiology and Behavior

Cognitive Psychology

Behavioural Brain Research

Mental Health and Physical Activity

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Neuroscience

Acta Psychologica

Cognitive Brain Research

Neuroimage

ACSM's guidelines for exercise testing and prescription

Increase in reaction time for the peripheral visual field during exercise above the ventilatory threshold

European Journal of Applied Physiology

The immediate and delayed effects of an acute bout of exercise on cognitive performance of healthy older adults

Journal of Aging and Physical Activity

The international prevalence study on physical activity: results from 20 countries

International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity

A developmental perspective on executive function

Child Development

Dose–response effect of acute resistance exercise on Tower of London in middle-aged adults

Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology