Cold Stimuli on the Cheeks Activate the Left Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex and Enhance Cognitive Performance
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Cold Stimuli on the Cheeks Activate the Left Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex and Enhance Cognitive Performance Yoshifumi Okura 1,2
&
Tetsuya Rikimaru 3
Received: 10 March 2020 / Accepted: 2 September 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Activation of the cerebral prefrontal cortex (PFC) has been reported to play important roles in neurocognitive functions, such as learning and cognitive performance. An increasing number of human studies using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) have extensively investigated the activation of the PFC associated with cognitive tasks. However, the association of cold stimulus with neurocognitive function and PFC activation has not been elucidated using NIRS. We examined the effect of cold stimulus on the cheeks on the activation of the cerebral PFC using NIRS in 18 adult male participants. We also examined the percent change in cognitive performance related to the activation of the PFC in the Stroop cognitive test with and without cold stimulus. Cold stimulus on the cheeks significantly increased blood flow bilaterally in the PFC, including the left dorsolateral regions. An increase in the cognitive performance on the Stroop cognitive test was significantly associated with the cold stimulus, which coincided with enhanced activation of the left dorsolateral region of the PFC. Therefore, cold stimulus on the cheeks may lead to enhanced Stroop cognitive performance, accompanied by the activation of the left dorsolateral region of the PFC. Cold stimuli may be applied on the cheeks to improve cognitive performance by enhancing the PFC activities via trigeminal nerve stimulation in the daily life. Furthermore, the findings of the present study provide insights for practical, non-pharmaceutical interventions using cold stimuli for cognitive enhancement in the elderly. Keywords Cerebral prefrontal cortex . Cognitive performance . Cold stimulus . Color–word matching Stroop task . Near-infrared spectroscopy . Trigeminal nerve
Introduction Living environments, including cold stimuli, can influence individuals’ attitudes and behaviors by affecting the level of arousal and learning efficiency. For example, washing the face with cold water, which is one of the trigeminal nerve-related cold stimuli, has been empirically recognized to enhance Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s41465-020-00192-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Yoshifumi Okura [email protected] 1
Department of Basic Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine School of Nursing, Fukuoka University, Fukuoka, Japan
2
Fuzzy Logic Systems Institute, Fukuoka, Japan
3
Department of Dental Hygiene, Fukuoka College of Health Sciences, Fukuoka, Japan
awareness or learning effectiveness and to reduce sleepiness or psychological fatigue in the daily life. Although activation of the cerebral prefrontal cortex (PFC) has been reported to play important roles in neurocognitive functions, such as learning, cognitiv
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