The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of different types of acute exercise on cognitive function and cerebral oxygenation. A within-subject design was adopted. In total, 20 healthy older adults were enrolled in the study. They came to the laboratory individually on four separate days and completed four conditions of activity. Four conditions were sedentary reading control (RC), cognitive exercise (CE), physical exercise (PE) and cognitive + physical exercise (CE + PE). During these visits, participants completed the Stroop task before and immediately after the experimental condition, which consisted of 15 min of aerobic exercise, verbal fluency task (VFT), and dual task. The Stroop task included the following two conditions: a naming condition and an executive condition. The fNIRS is an optical method using near-infrared light to measure relative changes of oxygenated (O2Hb) and deoxygenated (HHb) hemoglobin in the cortex. The results indicate that acute exercise facilitates performance for executive tasks, not only combined cognition, but also the different results between combined exercise and single exercise. The fNIRS findings showed that acute single exercise influences oxygenation for executive tasks but not for naming tasks. Greater improvement was observed in the post-exercise session of combined exercise during the modified Stroop. These findings demonstrate that acute single exercise, single cognition exercise, and combined exercise enhanced the performance of the inhibition control task. Only acute combined exercise has a general facilitative effect on inhibition control. Combined exercise was shown to be superior to single exercise for task-efficient cerebral oxygenation and improved oxygen utilization during cortical activation in older individuals. Also, to maximize the performance of cognition it may be important for older adults to take part in more cognitive demand exercise or take more kinds of exercise.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the benefits of exercises with different cognitive demands for cognitive functions (Executive and non-Executive) in healthy older adults. A cross-sectional design was adopted. In total, 84 healthy older adults were enrolled in the study. They were categorized into the Tai Chi group (TG), the brisk walking group (BG) or the control group (CG). Each participant performed the Stroop task and a digit comparison task. The Stroop task included the following three conditions: a naming condition, an inhibition condition and an executive condition. There were two experimental conditions in the digit comparison task: the non-delay condition and the delay condition. The results indicated that participants of the TG and BG revealed significant better performance than the CG in the executive condition of cognitive tasks and fitness. There was no significant difference of reaction time (RT) and accuracy rate in the inhibition and delay conditions of cognitive tasks and fitness between the TG and BG. The TG showed shorter reaction time in the naming and the executive conditions, and more accurate in the inhibition conditions than the BG. These findings demonstrated that regular participation in brisk walking and Tai Chi have significant beneficial effects on executive function and fitness. However, due to the high cognitive demands of the exercise, Tai Chi benefit cognitive functions (Executive and non-Executive) in older adults more than brisk walking does. Further studies should research the underlying mechanisms at the behavioural and neuroelectric levels, providing more evidence to explain the effect of high-cognitive demands exercise on different processing levels of cognition.

BackgroundResponse inhibition is associated with successful sporting performance. However, research on response inhibition in athletes from open-skill sports has mainly focused on a consciously triggered variety; little is known about open-skill athletes’ response inhibition elicited by unconscious stimuli.MethodsHere, we explored unconscious response inhibition differences between table tennis athletes (n = 20) and non-athletes (n = 19) using the masked go/no-go task and event-related potentials technique (ERPs).ResultsAt the behavioral level, table tennis athletes displayed shorter go-response times (RTs) than non-athletes in the conscious condition. Furthermore, table tennis athletes exhibited longer response time–slowing (RT-slowing) than non-athletes in the unconscious condition. At the neural level, table tennis athletes displayed shorter event-related potential N2 component latencies than non-athletes for all conditions. More importantly, athletes displayed larger no-go event-related potential P3 component amplitudes than non-athletes at both the conscious and unconscious levels.DiscussionThe present study results suggested that table tennis athletes have superior conscious and unconscious response inhibition compared to non-athletes.

It is well established that motor expertise is linked to superior mental rotation ability, but few studies have attempted to explain the factors that influence the stages of mental rotation in sport experts. Some authors have argued that athletes are faster in the perceptual and decision stages but not in the rotation stages of object-based transformations; however, stimuli related to sport have not been used to test mental rotation with egocentric transformations. Therefore, 24 adolescent elite divers and 23 adolescent nonathletes completed mental rotation tasks with object-based and egocentric transformations. The results showed faster reaction times (RTs) for the motor experts in tasks with both types of transformations (object-based cube, object-based body, and egocentric body). Additionally, the differences in favour of motor experts in the perceptual and decision stages were confirmed. Interestingly, motor experts also outperformed nonathletes in the rotation stages in the egocentric transformations. These findings are discussed against the background of the effects of sport expertise on mental rotation.