Are There Extended Cognitive Improvements from Different Kinds of Acute Bouts of Physical Activity?
- PDF / 682,654 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 67 Downloads / 136 Views
ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Are There Extended Cognitive Improvements from Different Kinds of Acute Bouts of Physical Activity? Mathias Haeger 1,2
&
Nils Bury 1,3,4 & Christian Endres 1,5 & Stefanie Klatt 1,6
Received: 18 November 2019 / Accepted: 29 May 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Acute bouts of physical activity of at least moderate intensity have shown to enhance cognition in young as well as older adults. This effect has been observed for different kinds of activities such as aerobic or strength and coordination training. However, only few studies have directly compared these activities regarding their effectiveness. Further, most previous studies have mainly focused on inhibition and have not examined other important core executive functions (i.e., updating, switching) which are essential for our behavior in daily life (e.g., staying focused, resisting temptations, thinking before acting), as well. Therefore, this study aimed to directly compare two kinds of activities, aerobic and coordinative, and examine how they might affect executive functions (i.e., inhibition, updating, and switching) in a test-retest protocol. It is interesting for practical implications, as coordinative exercises, for example, require little space and would be preferable in settings such as an office or a classroom. Furthermore, we designed our experiment in such a way that learning effects were controlled. Then, we tested the influence of acute bouts of physical activity on the executive functioning in both young and older adults (young 16–22 years, old 65–80 years). Overall, we found no differences between aerobic and coordinative activities and, in fact, benefits from physical activities occurred only in the updating tasks in young adults. Additionally, we also showed some learning effects that might influence the results. Thus, it is important to control cognitive tests for learning effects in test-retest studies as well as to analyze effects from physical activity on a construct level of executive functions. Keywords Cognition . Executive functions . Older adults . Physical activity . Young adults
Introduction * Mathias Haeger [email protected] 1
Institute of Exercise Training and Sport Informatics, German Sport University Cologne, Am Sportpark Müngersdorf 6, 50933 Cologne, Germany
2
Institute of Occupational Medicine, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Augustenburger Platz 1, 13353 Berlin, Germany
3
Institute of Visual Computing, Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg (University of Applied Sciences), Grantham-Allee 20, 53757 Sankt Augustin, Germany
4
Department of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele St, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada
5
St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences, Institute of Health Science, St. Pölten, Austria
6
Institute of Sport Science, University of Rostock, Ulmenstrasse 69, 18051 Rostock, Germany
In recent years, many studies have focused on acute bouts of moderate physical activities t
Data Loading...
