Effects of low- and high-intensity exercise on emotional face processing: an fMRI face-matching study

Abstract

Physical exercise has positive effects on mood and it reduces clinical depression and states of anxiety. While previous work mostly used subjective measures to study the effect of exercise upon emotions, this study for the first time employed blood oxygen level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to unravel associated neuronal changes of the emotional face-processing network in response to acute exercise. A total of 25 male athletes underwent fitness assessments to define two standardized 30 min exercise interventions (low and high intensity). The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) was completed pre- and post-exercise and neuronal responses to neutral, happy and fearful facial expressions were determined using an fMRI-based face-matching paradigm. Complete data sets were acquired in 21 participants (mean age, 27.2 ± 4.2 years). Both exercise interventions induced significant increases of the PANAS positive affect scale. Modulations of brain activation patterns following acute exercise were found only for fearful facial stimuli vs forms: reduced brain activation in posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus for the low condition and reduced activity in caudate nucleus and ventral anterior putamen for the high condition. In conclusion, this study provides first in vivo evidence that acute strenuous exercise interferes with emotional face-processing brain regions in an emotion type-specific manner.

Aerobic exercise enhances positive emotional reactivity in individuals with depressive symptoms: Evidence from neural responses to reward and emotional content

“…However, whether neural Interestingly, exercise-related increases in positive affect was related to a larger RewP amplitude, while an increase in pleasure following exercise was correlated with a smaller LPP amplitude to unpleasant pictures. Overall, these findings contribute to the extant evidence of post-exercise emotional responses (Crabbe, Smith, & Dishman, 2007;Monroe et al, 2020;Schmitt et al, 2019;Smith, 2013;Smith et al, 2002;Thom et al, 2019), and suggest that exercise enhances emotional reactivity to positively-valenced content, regardless of current depressive symptomatology.…”

“…The positive affect (PA) subscale consists of ten positive adjectives (proud, excited, strong, enthusiastic, determined, attentive, inspired, alert, interested, and active), while the negative affect (NA) subscale consists of ten negative adjectives (distressed, upset, guilty, scared, hostile, irritable, ashamed, nervous, jittery, and afraid). Although the items of the PANAS appear to represent a mixture of emotions, moods, and core affect (Ekkekakis, 2013), this scale has been widely used in exercise and health-behavioral research and was recently used in study investigating the effects of aerobic exercise on emotional processing (Schmitt et al, 2019). Thus, the scale's use in the present study facilitates comparison between present and past results.…”

“…Indeed, several previous studies have examined post-exercise changes in affect or mood along with psycho-physiological responses to emotional content (e.g., Crabbe, Smith, & Dishman, 2007;Monroe, Patel, McCully, & Dishman, 2020;Smith, O'Connor, Crabbe, & Dishman, 2002;Schmitt et al, 2019). However, there are important limitations in several of the measures that have been used to measure post-exercise changes in affect, mood, and emotion (e.g., POMS; Ekkekakis, 2013) 1 and therefore it remains to be determined whether post-exercise affective responses influence subsequent emotional reactivity.…”

Modulation of Distinct Intrinsic Resting State Brain Networks by Acute Exercise Bouts of Differing Intensity

“…The CBF in the sensorimotor cortices was reduced following low-intensity exercise and increased following moderate-intensity exercise [10]. A recently published study by our own group comparing the effect of low and high intensity exercise bouts on emotional face processing could show distinct changes in the brain during fearful face processing [12]: Low-intensity exercise resulted in reduced brain activations in PCC / precuneus and high intensity exercise was associated with reduced fearrelated activity in ventral basal ganglia structures. Taken together, the mentioned behavioral and imaging studies indicate distinct changes in cognitive, affective and brain function, dependent on exercise intensity.…”

The Contribution of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to the Understanding of the Effects of Acute Physical Exercise on Cognition

“…In particular, six studies did not perform neuroimaging using fMRI [80][81][82] or applied other neuroimaging techniques (e.g., functional near-infrared spectroscopy) [83][84][85]. The remaining 10 studies did not perform cognitive testing [86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94] or did not report data because they describe a study protocol [95].…”