Differences in cerebrovascular regulation and ventilatory responses during ramp incremental cycling in children, adolescents, and adults

Abstract

This is the first study to observe similar increases in cerebral blood flow during incremental exercise in adolescents and adults. Increases in cerebral blood flow during exercise were smaller in children compared with adolescents and adults and were associated with a greater V̇E/V̇co2 slope. This study also provides the first evidence on the progressive development of the regulatory role of end-tidal CO2 on cerebral blood flow during exercise during the transition from childhood to adulthood.

The effect of exercise intensity and cardiorespiratory fitness on the kinetic response of middle cerebral artery blood velocity during exercise in healthy adults

“…Finally, the present study did not collect measurements of and blood pressure during exercise, which are important regulators of CBF ( 14 , 29 ). Future research exploring the kinetic responses of these regulatory factors to exercise will further elucidate the physiological mechanisms underpinning the intensity-dependent MCAv kinetic response to exercise in adults, and how this can be influenced by important factors such as age ( 3 ), maturation ( 44 , 45 ), disease status ( 4 , 5 ), and exercise intensity ( 6 ).…”

Normal pace walking is beneficial to young participants’ executive abilities

“…We therefore suggest that the beneficial effect of walking on cognition may be due to higher peak cerebral oxygen, which has nothing to do with changes in systemic hemodynamics, because the THI value of the PFC during walking did not increase significantly compared with the resting state. The higher peak cerebral oxygen may therefore originate from the local self-regulation of cerebral blood vessels [ 32 , 33 ].…”

Cerebral blood flow and cerebrovascular reactivity are modified by maturational stage and exercise training status during youth

“…However, the modest relationship was limited to the hippocampus, and was far weaker than the relationship between aerobic fitness and middle cerebral artery blood velocity (MCAv) reported in adults (Bailey et al, 2013). Furthermore, the acute change in MCAv during exercise is attenuated in prepubertal children compared to both adolescents (Weston et al, 2021) and young healthy adults (Ellis et al, 2017;Weston et al, 2021).…”

“…However, the modest relationship was limited to the hippocampus, and was far weaker than the relationship between aerobic fitness and middle cerebral artery blood velocity (MCAv) reported in adults (Bailey et al., 2013). Furthermore, the acute change in MCAv during exercise is attenuated in pre‐pubertal children compared to both adolescents (Weston et al., 2021) and young healthy adults (Ellis et al., 2017; Weston et al., 2021). Indeed, the MCAv response during exercise is related to end‐tidal CO 2 ($${P_{{\mathrm{ETC}}{{\mathrm{O}}_{\mathrm{2}}}}}$$) in adults, but not in pre‐pubertal children (Ellis et al., 2017), while the amplitude of cerebrovascular reactivity to CO 2 ($${\mathrm{CV}}{{\mathrm{R}}_{{\mathrm{C}}{{\mathrm{O}}_{\mathrm{2}}}}}$$) may increase with chronological age in youths (Leung et al., 2016), and the blood flow response time (τ) to hypercapnia is blunted in children compared to adults (Tallon et al., 2020, 2022).…”