Hemodynamic Changes in Response to Aerobic Exercise: Near-infrared Spectroscopy Study

Abstract

This study aimed to determine the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the effects of aerobic exercise, which influence brain O2 consumption, on cognitive enhancement. Sixteen healthy men were asked to complete a 2-back test at rest and after moderate and high-intensity aerobic exercise. During the 2-back test, hemodynamic changes within the prefrontal cortex were assessed using high-density functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Scores of the 2-back test, regardless of the exercise intensity, were positively correlated with the hemodynamic changes within the right and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). During an 2-back test, there were differences in the hemodynamic changes within the DLPFC with moderate and high-intensity exercise conditions. In the 2-back condition, the accumulated oxyhemoglobin within the right DLPFC after moderate intensity exercise was 7.9% lower than that at baseline, while the accumulated oxyhemoglobin within the left DLPFC was 14.6% higher than that at baseline after high-intensity exercise. In response to the 2-back test, the accumulated oxygenated hemoglobin within the left DLPFC after high-intensity exercise increased more significantly than that observed after moderate intensity exercise. These results show that the right DLPFC consumes O2 more efficiently in response to moderate intensity aerobic exercise than in response to high-intensity aerobic exercise.

Exercise promotes brain health: a systematic review of fNIRS studies

“…Overall, 29 studies were included in the systematic review. Regarding the study region, 18 studies were conducted in Asia (Yanagisawa, 2010 ; Hyodo, 2012 ; Endo et al, 2013 ; Byun et al, 2014 ; Wen et al, 2015a , b ; Jiang and Wang, 2016 ; Chen et al, 2017 ; Coetsee and Terblanche, 2017 ; Hashimoto et al, 2018 ; Kujach, 2018 ; Ji et al, 2019 ; Xu et al, 2019 ; Lai et al, 2020 ; Yang et al, 2020 ; Kim et al, 2021 ; Miyashiro et al, 2021 ; Zhang et al, 2021 ), 5 in Europe (Eggenberger et al, 2016 ; Kenville et al, 2017 ; Herold et al, 2019 ; Carius et al, 2020 ; Stute et al, 2020 ), 2 in Oceania (Kriel et al, 2016 ; Lambrick et al, 2016 ), 3 in North America (Kurz et al, 2012 ; Auger et al, 2016 ; Monroe et al, 2016 ), and 1 in Africa (Coetsee and Terblanche, 2017 ). A total of 664 participants were examined, with sample sizes ranging from 10 to 67.…”

“… (A) Risk of bias ratings. (B) Risk of bias graph: percentage of trials with low, unclear, or high risk of bias ratings for each domain (Yanagisawa, 2010 ; Hyodo, 2012 ; Kurz et al, 2012 ; Endo et al, 2013 ; Byun et al, 2014 ; Wen et al, 2015a , b ; Auger et al, 2016 ; Eggenberger et al, 2016 ; Jiang and Wang, 2016 ; Kriel et al, 2016 ; Lambrick et al, 2016 ; Monroe et al, 2016 ; Chen et al, 2017 ; Coetsee and Terblanche, 2017 ; Kenville et al, 2017 ; Hashimoto et al, 2018 ; Kujach, 2018 ; Herold et al, 2019 ; Ji et al, 2019 ; Xu et al, 2019 ; Carius et al, 2020 ; Lai et al, 2020 ; Stute et al, 2020 ; Yang et al, 2020 ; Kim et al, 2021 ; Miyashiro et al, 2021 ; Zhang et al, 2021 ). …”

“…Indeed, an increasing number of studies have demonstrated its beneficial effects on the healthy development of brain function (Mandolesi et al, 2018 ; Chen, 2020 ). Recent studies have predominantly focused on the variations in cognitive function and brain functional activity, such as cerebral blood flow, before and after exercise intervention (Fujihara et al, 2021 ; Kim et al, 2021 ; Zhang et al, 2021 ). Exploring real-time alterations in cerebral blood flow during exercise interventions can reveal hemodynamic changes (Endo et al, 2013 ; Eggenberger et al, 2016 ; Carius et al, 2020 ) and execution (Chen et al, 2017 ; Coetsee and Terblanche, 2017 ; Yang et al, 2020 ) and enhance our understanding of the mechanism underlying the effects of exercise on the brain.…”

Wearable, high-density fNIRS and diffuse optical tomography technologies: a perspective

“…These improvements in fNIRS device wearability and weight have permitted increasingly unrestricted functional neuroimaging, which is reflected in the development of paradigms to study brain function in cognitive tasks that incorporate movement, 17 exercise, 18 , 19 and dynamic balance 20 . The rationale behind these studies is to increase ecological validity, that is, the degree to which the task is representative of a real situation 21 .…”

“…For a given density of source and detector optodes, the FOV of an fNIRS device will clearly be limited by the total number of source and detector optodes (or modules) that the device can accommodate. Currently, the FOV in commercially available HD systems is mostly limited to a specific brain region, such as the prefrontal cortex (PFC), 11 , 19 , 24 the OCC, 13 or a combination, for example, the bilateral covering of the temporal lobes 36 or the PFC-OCC, 43 though this is changing rapidly; at the time of writing, kernel flow is the only system covering the whole head, although not uniformly. Depending on the arrangement, somewhere in the order of 200 source and 200 detector positions are required to provide HD sampling of the entire adult scalp.…”