Brief Relaxation Practice Induces Significantly More Prefrontal Cortex Activation during Arithmetic Tasks Comparing to Viewing Greenery Images as Revealed by Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS)

Abstract

Background: There is little understanding on how brief relaxation practice and viewing greenery images would affect brain responses during cognitive tasks. In the present study, we examined the variation in brain activation of the prefrontal cortex during arithmetic tasks before and after viewing greenery images, brief relaxation practice, and control task using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Method: This randomized controlled study examined the activation patterns of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in three groups of research participants who were exposed to viewing greenery images (n = 10), brief relaxation practice (n = 10), and control task (n = 11). The activation pattern of the PFC was measured pre- and post-intervention using a portable fNIRS device and reported as mean total oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO μm). Primary outcome of the study is the difference in HbO μm between post- and pre-intervention readings during a cognitive task that required the research participants to perform arithmetic calculation. Results: In terms of intervention-related differences, there was significant difference in average HbO μm when performing arithmetic tasks before and after brief relaxation practice (p < 0.05). There were significant increases in average HbO μm in the right frontopolar cortex (p = 0.029), the left frontopolar cortex (p = 0.01), and the left orbitofrontal cortex (p = 0.033) during arithmetic tasks after brief relaxation practice. In contrast, there were no significant differences in average HbO μm when performing arithmetic tasks before and after viewing greenery images (p > 0.05) and the control task (p > 0.05). Conclusion: Our preliminary findings show that brief relaxation practice but not viewing greenery images led to significant frontal lobe activation during arithmetic tasks. The present study demonstrated, for the first time, that there was an increase in activation in neuroanatomical areas including the combined effort of allocation of attentional resources, exploration, and memory performance after the brief relaxation practice. Our findings suggest the possibility that the right frontopolar cortex, the left frontopolar cortex, and the left orbitofrontal cortex may be specifically associated with the benefits of brief relaxation on the brain.

Effect of Employees’ Perceived Green HRM on Their Workplace Green Behaviors in Oil and Mining Industries: Based on Cognitive-Affective System Theory

“…In addition, this study only focused on greenery and green model. Future research is thus suggested to explore more the biological aspects of greenery to see if there are other methods, such as brief relaxation practice, that are more effective to improve cognitive performance of employees [73]. Lastly, the current study mainly talked about psychological theories and did not study the biological aspects of greenery.…”

Interoceptive Attentiveness Induces Significantly More PFC Activation during a Synchronized Linguistic Task Compared to a Motor Task as Revealed by Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

“…Starting from the neural bases that support IA, previous neuroscientific research has demonstrated activation of different portions of the right hemisphere, such as the supramarginal (SM) gyrus [10][11][12][13][14], the prefrontal cortex (PFC) [15], the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) [16], and the frontopolar cortex [17] during the execution of interoceptive attention/awareness (IAA) tasks. While the right SM has been shown to be the "neural coder" of peripersonal space and corporeal awareness [10], the right DLPFC, instead, seems to orient and sustain attention by avoiding distractions in a goal-directed way [18].…”

“…Accordingly, because of its sensitivity to movement artifacts, fMRI cannot be employed during real social interactions or movements, while functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) can be a useful technique that can overcome these limitations [46]. Indeed, the paucity of fMRI studies on IA tasks or brief relaxation practices could be due to the difficulty of an individual executing these practices in the fMRI scanner [17], and this proves even more difficult to perform during motor synchronization tasks. In contrast, fNIRS is particularly well-suited for evaluating the cortical responsivity in terms of hemodynamic variations related to information processing even in the presence of movement artifacts [47,48].…”

Short-Term High-Intensity Interval Exercise Promotes Motor Cortex Plasticity and Executive Function in Sedentary Females

“…The data in the first 10 s of each condition was used as a baseline for HbO, which was then subtracted from the HbO values of each task condition to obtain final HbO data. According to the previous studies (Zhang et al, 2020;Jang et al, 2021)…”

“…The modified Beer Lambert Law (MBLL) was used to convert raw light intensities into concentration changes in oxygenated hemoglobin ( HbO2). The region of interest (ROI) was selected based on previous study (Zhang et al, 2020;Jang et al, 2021). The MNI coordinates for each channel were defined base on the equipment coordinates.…”