Acute Effects of Physical Exercise on Prefrontal Cortex Activity in Older Adults: A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study

Abstract

We examined the acute effect of physical exercise on prefrontal cortex activity in older adults using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Fourteen older adults visited our laboratory twice: once for exercise and once for the control condition. On each visit, subjects performed working memory tasks before and after moderate intensity exercise with a cycling ergo-meter. We measured the NIRS response at the prefrontal cortex during the working memory task. We found that physical exercise improved behavioral performance of the working memory task compared with the control condition. Moreover, NIRS analysis showed that physical exercise enhanced the prefrontal cortex activity, especially in the left hemisphere, during the working memory task. These findings suggest that the moderate intensity exercise enhanced the prefrontal cortex activity associated with working memory performance in older adults.

Cognitive effects of a 30-min aerobic exercise bout on adults with overweight/obesity and type 2 diabetes

“…Additionally, competing attention has been suggested as a possible explanation for the small decreased effect size in cognitive function during the initial phase of acute aerobic exercise (39). While other studies have failed to demonstrate a selfregulatory fatigue effect following acute aerobic exercise (41,46,56,65), ours is the first to examine this effect in a T2DM population, which has an arguably greater susceptibility to self-regulatory fatigue particularly following aerobic exercise.…”

“…This is significant because of the DLPFC involvement in EF (and particularly Stroop performance), which has been demonstrated in both younger and older adults (41,46). Furthermore, increased activity in the PFC following exercise has been observed by using functional magnetic resonance imaging and functional near-infrared spectroscopy, and this increase in activity is associated with improved performance of Stroop (41) and a working memory task (56). Thus, decreased DLPFC activity due to selfregulatory fatigue may be mitigated by an increase in PFC activity following exercise.…”

Acute exercise increases oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin in the prefrontal cortex

“…The majority of research, including the present study, assessing exercise-dependent changes in PFC oxygenation focuses on young adults performing incremental cycling tasks, although exercise has been shown to enhance PFC oxygenation and associated executive function at other ages, as well as during different exercise tasks. For instance, older adults show augmented PFC oxygenation and associated cognitive performance during exercise [26,27]. During a treadmill exercise task, O 2 Hb levels in the PFC increased in a dose-dependent manner as participants accelerated from rest to either 3, 5 (both walking), or 9 km/h (running), suggesting a role for the PFC in adapting to the cognitive demand of the exercise task [15].…”

Development of a Conceptual Model for Smoking Cessation: Physical Activity, Neurocognition, and Executive Functioning

“…Regular participation in PA may help to attenuate the effects that smoking has on neurocognitive decline as PA has been shown to improve cognition (Middleton, Mitnitski, Fallah, Kirkland, & Rockwood, 2008), increase memory (Erickson et al, 2011), increase information-processing speed (Sandroff, Pilutti, Dlugonski, & Motl, 2013), increase prefrontal cortex activity during memory tasks (Tsujii, Komatsu, & Sakatani, 2013), increase cerebral blood flow (Zhang et al, 2013), reduce atherosclerosis (Thompson et al, 2003), and improve endothelial function (Higashi & Yoshizumi, 2004).…”