Regular Open-Skill Exercise Generally Enhances Attentional Resources Related to Perceptual Processing in Young Males

Abstract

This study aimed to examine whether the regular open-skill exercise led to a selective improvement or a general improvement on cognitive function in healthy young males. Besides, we also intend to expand previous studies by looking into the temporal dynamics of early information processes and cognitive processes through appraising the extensive temporal series of stimulus-locked ERP components. Sixty healthy young males were classified into two groups: those who regularly participated in the open-skill exercise for at least 2 years (n = 30), and those who exercised rarely. The participants conducted the Stroop task with event-related brain potential (ERP) recorded. The results indicated that compared with the rare exercise group, the open-skill exercise group led to a selective improvement for accuracy under the incongruent condition. And the open-skill exercise group also led to a selective improvement for response time under the incongruent condition. Moreover, the open-skill exercise group yielded larger P200 amplitudes under both the congruent and incongruent conditions compared with the rare exercise group. The findings suggest that the regular open-skill exercise may promote executive function by an increase in the allocation of attentional resources related to perceptual processing and greater interference control during cognitively demanding tasks in healthy young males.

Differences in inhibitory control and motor fitness in children practicing open and closed skill sports

“…The fact that OSG presented better performance than SG in the incongruent, rather than congruent condition, was almost expected. Given their unpredictable nature, the open skill sports require a high level of inhibitory control compared with closed-skill sports reflecting the incongruent conditions with distractors 25 . With regards to CSG, our data revealed no inhibitory control advantage on closed skill sport participants, who had similar response time and accuracy to sedentary group, despite higher level of physical activity (Table 1 ).…”

Continuous table tennis is associated with processing in frontal brain areas: an EEG approach

“…Several findings assume that—apart from exercise intensity—the modality of the exercise performed may modulate the beneficial response of the brain to exercise (Voelcker-Rehage et al 2010 ; Tsai et al 2017 ). Cross sectional studies suggest that challenging coordinative exercise, where the individuals are asked to actively engage within the environment, seems to induce a more beneficial effect on cognitive functions in terms of inhibitory control (Wang et al 2013a ), temporal processing (Wang et al 2013b ), task switching (Yu et al 2017 ) or perceptual processing (Zhou et al 2020 ) compared to exercise with restricted coordinative demands or cardiovascular exercise only. A potential stimulus for these superior adaptations are the highly cognitive and multisensory demands of coordinative exercise (Wang et al 2013a ).…”

“…The requirements of coordination exercise may change when performed in an unpredictable environment referred to as open-skill exercise (Schmidt and Wrisberg 2004 ). Sports like, badminton, table tennis (TT), tennis and team sports are characterized by everchanging stimuli requiring subsequent adaptation of movement to the dynamic environment (Gu et al 2019 ; Ingold et al 2020 ; Zhou et al 2020 ). For instance, during TT it is essential to track the movement of the ball, anticipate the trajectory, react correspondingly and finally return towards the opponent’s court (Akpinar et al 2012 ).…”

Comparison of the effects of open- and closed-skill exercise on cognition and peripheral proteins: A cross-sectional study

“…A cross-sectional study showed that regular open-skill exercise promotes executive functions, likely due to various sport training characteristics that involve more complex cognitive processes [ 12 ]. Similarly, open-skill exercise had been demonstrated to improve executive network efficiency compared to closed-skill exercise [ 13 ].…”