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Hypertension affects more than 40% of adults worldwide and is associated with stroke, myocardial infarction, heart failure, and other cardiovascular diseases. It has also been shown to cause severe functional and structural damage to the brain, leading to cognitive impairment and dementia. Furthermore, it is believed that these cognitive impairments affect the mental ability to maintain productivity at work, ultimately causing social and economic problems. Because hypertension is a chronic condition that requires clinical treatment, strategies with fewer side effects and less-invasive procedures are needed. Physical exercise (PE) has proven to be an efficient and complementary tool for hypertension management, and its peripheral benefits have been widely supported by related studies. However, few studies have specifically examined the potential positive effects of PE on the brain in hypertensive individuals. This narrative review discusses the pathophysiological mechanisms that hypertension promotes in the brain, and suggests PE as an important tool to prevent and reduce cognitive damage caused by hypertension. We also provide PE recommendations for hypertensive individuals, as well as suggestions for promoting PE as a method for increasing cognitive abilities in the brain, particularly for hypertensive individuals.

BackgroundIndividuals with Substance Use Disorder (SUD) have lower baseline metabolic activity of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) associated with impairment of cognitive functions in decision-making and inhibitory control. Aerobic exercise has shown to improve PFC function and cognitive performance, however, its effects on SUD individuals remain unclear.PurposeTo verify the cognitive performance and oxygenation of the PFC during an incremental exercise in SUD individuals.MethodsFourteen individuals under SUD treatment performed a maximum graded exercise test on a cycle ergometer with continuous measurements of oxygen consumption, PFC oxygenation, and inhibitory control (Stroop test) every two minutes of exercise at different intensities. Fifteen non-SUD individuals performed the same protocol and were used as control group.ResultsExercise increased oxyhemoglobin (O2Hb) and total hemoglobin (tHb) by 9% and 7%, respectively. However, when compared to a non-SUD group, this increase was lower at high intensities (p<0.001), and the inhibitory cognitive control was lower at rest and during exercise (p<0.007). In addition, PFC hemodynamics during exercise was inversely correlated with inhibitory cognitive performance (reaction time) (r = -0.62, p = 0.001), and a lower craving perception for the specific abused substance (p = 0.0189) was reported immediately after exercise.ConclusionDespite SUD individuals having their PFC cerebral oxygenation increased during exercise, they presented lower cognition and oxygenation when compared to controls, especially at elevated intensities. These results may reinforce the role of exercise as an adjuvant treatment to improve PFC function and cognitive control in individuals with SUD.

Motor skills learned implicitly should be less susceptible to deterioration under psychological pressure (i.e., choking) than skills learned more explicitly. In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we investigated that prediction. A systematic search was conducted for articles that had participants learn a motor skill implicitly relative to a comparison group and had both groups perform the skill under low-and high-pressure conditions. Ten studies with a median of nine participants/group met inclusion criteria. Seven of ten studies reported an advantage of learning a motor skill implicitly when performing under psychological pressure. Moreover, a multivariate random-effects metaanalysis revealed that participants who learned a motor skill implicitly performed better under a high-pressure condition than a low-pressure condition, Hedges' g av = −1.17, 95% lower CI [−1.61], upper CI [−0.74], whereas participants in the comparison group performed similarly between conditions, Hedges' g av = 0.19, 95% lower CI [ −0.33], upper CI [ 0.71]. For the implicit learning group, a funnel plot of the relationship between effect size and standard error showed an asymmetrical distribution and a significant relationship, indicating bias. In conclusion, results confirm the prediction that implicit motor learning benefits performance under pressure. However, this effect might be distorted by bias and driven by underpowered studies, likely causing it to be overestimated. We suggest the advantage of learning a motor skill implicitly vesus explicitly on performance under pressure be assumed to be moderately sized, pending future research, and encourage preregistered studies with larger sample sizes to estimate the effect more accurately.

Recent evidence suggests humans have an automatic attraction to effort minimization. Yet, how this attraction is associated with response inhibition is still unclear. Here, we used go/no-go tasks to capture inhibitory control in response to stimuli depicting physical activity versus physical inactivity in 59 healthy young individuals. Higher commission errors (i.e., failure to refrain a response to a “no-go” stimulus) were used as a measure for inhibitory control. Based on the energetic cost minimization theory, we hypothesized that participants would exhibit higher commission errors when responding to stimuli depicting physical inactivity stimuli rather than physical activity stimuli. As expected, mixed effects models showed that, compared to physical activity stimuli, participants exhibited higher commission errors when responding to stimuli depicting physical inactivity (odds ratio = 1.59, 95% Confidence Interval [95%CI] = 1.18 to 2.16, p = .003). These results suggest that physical inactivity stimuli might require high response inhibition. This study lends support for the hypothesis that an attraction to effort minimization might affect inhibitory processes in the presence of stimuli related to this minimization. The study pre-registration form can be found at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/RKYHB