A Single Bout of Aerobic Exercise Provides an Immediate “Boost” to Cognitive Flexibility

Abstract

Executive function includes the core components of working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. A wealth of studies demonstrate that working memory and inhibitory control improve following a single bout of exercise; however, a paucity-and equivocal-body of work has demonstrated a similar benefit for cognitive flexibility. Cognitive flexibility underlies switching between different attentional-and motor-related goals, and a potential limitation of previous work examining this component in an exercise context is that they included tasks involving non-executive processes (i.e., numerosity, parity, and letter judgments). To address this issue, Experiment 1 employed a 20-min bout of aerobic exercise and examined pre-and immediate post-exercise cognitive flexibility via stimulus-driven (SD) and minimally delayed (MD) saccades ordered in an AABB task-switching paradigm. Stimulus-driven saccades are a standard task requiring a response at target onset, whereas MD saccades are a non-standard and top-down task requiring a response only after the target is extinguished. Work has shown that RTs for a SD saccade preceded by a MD saccade are longer than when a SD saccade is preceded by its same task-type, whereas the converse switch does not influence performance (i.e., the unidirectional switch-cost). Experiment 1 yielded a 28 ms and 8 ms unidirectional switch-cost pre-and post-exercise, respectively (ps < 0.001); however, the magnitude of the switch-cost was reduced post-exercise (p = 0.005). Experiment 2 involved a non-exercise control condition and yielded a reliable and equivalent magnitude unidirectional switch-cost at a pre-(28 ms) and post-break (26 ms) assessment (ps < 0.001). Accordingly, a single-bout of exercise improved taskswitching efficiency and thereby provides convergent evidence that exercise provides a global benefit to the core components of executive function.

Pupillometry Reveals the Role of Arousal in a Postexercise Benefit to Executive Function

“…As such, the current paradigm not only required the executive demand of response suppression for antisaccade trials, but also the executive component of cognitive flexibility (i.e., task-switching) across antisaccades and prosaccades [13,23,27]. Furthermore, and given that cognitive flexibility and task-switching efficiency elicits a robust postexercise benefit [4,28], it is possible that the postexercise decrease in prosaccade RTs observed here reflects a global benefit to executive function.…”

“…As a result, we cannot directly assert that the post exercise changes in saccade performance and pupillometry metrics are specific to exercise or underlie a practice-related improvement in the current task. With that being said, our lab has repeatedly shown that a non-exercise control condition does not exhibit a practice-related improvement in pro-or antisaccade performance measures when performed in separate blocks [11,12] or randomly interleaved trials [4,23,28]. Specifically, three studies by our group [12,25,28], employing null hypothesis testing in conditions involving exercise (same exercise intensity used in the current study) and control (rest) conditions, reported that antisaccade RTs reliably decreased from to pre-to postexercise (all ps < 0.001; all d z > 1.10), whereas no reliable change was associated with the pre-to post-rest assessments (all ps > 0.50, all d z < 0.14).…”

“…With that being said, our lab has repeatedly shown that a non-exercise control condition does not exhibit a practice-related improvement in pro-or antisaccade performance measures when performed in separate blocks [11,12] or randomly interleaved trials [4,23,28]. Specifically, three studies by our group [12,25,28], employing null hypothesis testing in conditions involving exercise (same exercise intensity used in the current study) and control (rest) conditions, reported that antisaccade RTs reliably decreased from to pre-to postexercise (all ps < 0.001; all d z > 1.10), whereas no reliable change was associated with the pre-to post-rest assessments (all ps > 0.50, all d z < 0.14). Moreover, here, we computed supplementary two one-sided test (TOST) statistics from our group's previous work, and the results showed that pre-to post-rest antisaccade RTs for Samani and Heath (t(24) = 1.79, p = 0.043) [12], Heath and Shukla (t(17) = 2.07, p = 0.027) [28], and Tari et al (t(14) = 1.88, p < 0.044) [25] were all within an equivalence boundary.…”

“…Specifically, three studies by our group [12,25,28], employing null hypothesis testing in conditions involving exercise (same exercise intensity used in the current study) and control (rest) conditions, reported that antisaccade RTs reliably decreased from to pre-to postexercise (all ps < 0.001; all d z > 1.10), whereas no reliable change was associated with the pre-to post-rest assessments (all ps > 0.50, all d z < 0.14). Moreover, here, we computed supplementary two one-sided test (TOST) statistics from our group's previous work, and the results showed that pre-to post-rest antisaccade RTs for Samani and Heath (t(24) = 1.79, p = 0.043) [12], Heath and Shukla (t(17) = 2.07, p = 0.027) [28], and Tari et al (t(14) = 1.88, p < 0.044) [25] were all within an equivalence boundary. Accordingly, null and equivalence tests from previous work support the direct assertion that antisaccade performance metrics do not relate to a practice-related improvement; rather, the results indicate that improved antisaccade RTs are specific to an exercise intervention.…”

Differences in the Effects of Reading and Aerobic Exercise Interventions on Inhibitory Control of College Students With Mobile Phone Addiction

“…Second , previous studies used some cognitive tasks such as the Flanker task, Stroop task, and Go/no-go task to assess inhibitory control. However, some researchers argued that these tasks used to evaluate the inhibitory control require not only inhibitory control but also some other functions such as language, visual perception (Stroop task), and even perceptual-motor skill (Flanker task) ( 23 , 26 ).Therefore, task involving both executive and non-executive components may not be able to detect subtle executive changes caused by short-time exercise. Third , in the study of Fan et al, which is the most relevant study of the present study, they assigned only 5 participants in each of the three groups of various intensity levels.…”