A single high-intensity exercise bout during early consolidation does not influence retention or relearning of sensorimotor locomotor long-term memories

The acute effects of aerobic exercise on sensorimotor adaptation in chronic stroke

“…Such an improvement in reaching performance following exercise may represent an acute change in the brain leading to an enhanced internal environment that could facilitate adaptation. We note that the current findings contrast with some recent work by Charalambous et al (2018, 2019) who found no effects of exercise on consolidation in locomotor adaptation in stroke patients [12] and in healthy controls [10]. Several differences in the design might have led to this pattern of results.…”

“…As well as improving brain performance from a cognitive function perspective, there is also evidence for specific improvements in sensorimotor function following acute aerobic exercise. This finding corroborates the work of others who have demonstrated that acute exercise improves various forms of motor learning in young healthy adults [5-9], although not all studies show that exercise improves motor learning [10-12]. In a recent study, young healthy participants who first exercised at a moderate intensity on a cycle ergometer for 25 minutes subsequently demonstrated improved movement accuracy and reaction time in a sensorimotor adaptation task [9].…”

Effect of a Single Bout of Acute Aerobic Exercise at Moderate-to-Vigorous Intensities on Motor Learning, Retention and Transfer

“…Furthermore, the study examined a relatively short-term retention (24 h) after motor practice. It has been suggested that motor learning (consolidation) is best studied at various intervals of delayed retention [67] However, previous acute exercise learning studies that have applied 24-h and 7-day retention intervals did not find differences between these timepoints [6,32,55,58]. In a previous study, we did not find any effect of aerobic exercise on 7-day retention after a 4-week practice period [68].…”

“…Moderate intensity exercise has demonstrated both improved [59] and no significant effect [29,30] on motor retention. Similarly, vigorous intensity aerobic exercise has been found to improve short-and long-term retention [6,31,32,56], albeit other studies have not observed similar patterns of results [55,58]. The current base of studies thus does not indicate a systematic effect of acute exercise on the retention of motor skills, and a clear avenue for further research could disentangle the specific relationship between exercise intensity, type of motor skill, and short/long-term retention.…”

“…Conducting a bout of aerobic exercise before motor practice has consistently been found to not improve learning rates across blocks of practice compared to non-exercise (rest) conditions (see [27] and [29] for other patterns of results). This overall pattern of similarity in immediate motor skill improvement between exercising and non-exercising conditions is evident in studies on bouts of acute vigorous-to-heavy intensity cardiovascular exercise [6,31,32,[55][56][57][58] as well as bouts of acute moderate intensity exercise [11,30,59]. The results of these studies, and those of ours, thus clearly indicate that acute aerobic exercise conducted at moderate-to-vigorous intensity levels for 20-30 min has no effect on subsequent acquisition/practice phase of the motor learning process.…”