Measuring electrical activity in the brain during exercise: A review of methods, challenges, and opportunities

Abstract

Background:During the last decade, the use of mobile electroencephalography (EEG) devices has furthered understanding of the mechanisms that underlie psychophysical and affective responses during the execution of gross movements (e.g. walking and cycling). Such devices can also be used to shed new light on the mechanisms that underlie attention allocation, fatigue-related symptoms, emotional reactions, and behavioural outcomes associated with physical activity programmes. This advancement could, potentially, herald a new era for the field of sport and exercise psychology, wherein researchers will be able to investigate athletic performance and exercise behaviour from a different perspective.Objective:In this review, we explore some of the most recent approaches used to measure electrical activity in the brain during exercise.Practical recommendations:We provide an overview of the practical issues that researchers face in this field, such as dealing with artefacts elicited by body and cable movements and how to process the biological signal. We also review methods that researchers can employ to prevent electrical artefacts from compromising the fidelity of data. We make a case for assessing psychological and psychobiological parameters in tandem with EEG in order to arrive at a fuller understanding of exercise-related phenomena.

The Impact of Mental Fatigue on a Strength Endurance Task: Is there a Role for the Movement-Related Cortical Potential?

“…Although both studies focused on the same brain region and type of EEG analysis (i.e., spectral band analysis), they did not fully elucidate the underlying mechanisms connecting RPE with mental fatigue. Even though spectral band analyses provide valuable insights, the complexity of brain activity prompts the need for a variety of analytical techniques to be used with EEG data (20,21). Moreover, mental fatigue has been connected to multiple brain regions other than the prefrontal cortex, such as the somatosensory association cortex (SAC) (22) and the occipital lobe (23).…”