Improvement of Processing Speed in Executive Function Immediately following an Increase in Cardiovascular Activity

Abstract

This study aims to identify the acute effects of physical exercise on specific cognitive functions immediately following an increase in cardiovascular activity. Stair-climbing exercise is used to increase the cardiovascular output of human subjects. The color-naming Stroop Test was used to identify the cognitive improvements in executive function with respect to processing speed and error rate. The study compared the Stroop results before and immediately after exercise and before and after nonexercise, as a control. The results show that there is a significant increase in processing speed and a reduction in errors immediately after less than 30 min of aerobic exercise. The improvements are greater for the incongruent than for the congruent color tests. This suggests that physical exercise induces a better performance in a task that requires resolving conflict (or interference) than a task that does not. There is no significant improvement for the nonexercise control trials. This demonstrates that an increase in cardiovascular activity has significant acute effects on improving the executive function that requires conflict resolution (for the incongruent color tests) immediately following aerobic exercise more than similar executive functions that do not require conflict resolution or involve the attention-inhibition process (for the congruent color tests).

Cognitive effects of a 30-min aerobic exercise bout on adults with overweight/obesity and type 2 diabetes

“…The discrepancy between GNG results and Stroop results in the current study suggests that, even among response inhibition tasks, there are differences in effect of exercise, a finding which is consistent with prior research (68). Specifically, while a number of studies have shown improvement in Stroop performance (40,41,46,(69)(70)(71), results for GNG have been inconsistent (72,73). This finding suggests that Stroop, but not GNG performance, is significantly improved following acute aerobic exercise; however, future research is needed to confirm these findings.…”

The Acute Effect of Exercise on Executive Function and Attention: Resistance Versus Aerobic Exercise

“…(Alves et al, 2012) and the other with high school students (Harveson et al, 2016), both of which demonstrated an improvement in EF following both aerobic and resistance exercise. The fact that acute aerobic exercise improves EF is well documented (e.g., Byun et al, 2014;Tam, 2013).…”

“…Acute moderate-intensity aerobic exercise was found to improve EF, as indicated by higher scores in the interference phase of the Stroop test in endurance athletes (Hogervorst, Riedel, Jeukendrup, & Jolles, http://www.ac-psych.org 2019 • volume 15(3) • 208-215 209 1996), and in young adults (Tam, 2013). Interestingly, the improvement in the interference phase of executive control in young athletes was explained by improved attention (Chang, Pesce, Chiang, Kuo, & Fong, 2015).…”

Interventions in Parkinson rsquo s disease Role of executive function

“…Based on studies included in this analysis, there seems to be some benefit of aerobic exercise on PD symptoms, with indications that exercise might improve EF, including judgment and attention in the presence and absence of depression (40,41,49).…”