The effect of 6 h of running on brain activity, mood, and cognitive performance

Abstract

Long-duration exercise has been linked with the psychological model of flow. It is expected that the flow experience is characterized by specific changes in cortical activity, especially a transient hypofrontality, which has recently been connected with an increase in cognitive performance post-exercise. Nevertheless, data on neuro-affective and neuro-cognitive effects during prolonged exercise are rare. The cognitive performance, mental state, flow experience, and brain cortical activity of 11 ultramarathon runners (6 female, 5 male) were assessed before, several times during, and after a 6-h run. A decrease in cortical activity (beta activity) was measured in the frontal cortex, whereas no changes were measured for global beta, frontal or global alpha activity. Perceived physical relaxation and flow state increased significantly after 1 h of running but decreased during the following 5 h. Perceived physical state and motivational state remained stable during the first hour of running but then decreased significantly. Cognitive performance as well as the underlying neurophysiological events (recorded as event-related potentials) remained stable across the 6-h run. Despite the fact that women reported significant higher levels of flow, no further gender effects were noticeable. Supporting the theory of a transient hypofrontality, a clear decrease in frontal cortex activity was noticeable. Interestingly, this had no effect on cognitive performance. The fact that self-reported flow experience only increased during the first hour of running before decreasing, leads us to assume that changes in cortical activity, and the experience of flow may not be linked as previously supposed.

Physiology and Pathophysiology in Ultra-Marathon Running

“…While female ultra-marathoners tend to be more intrinsically motivated (Krouse et al, 2011 ), less concerned with the competitive nature (Frick, 2011 ) and more attentive to health (Krouse et al, 2011 ), men have a competitive nature in which they want to compete with opponents and win a race (Doppelmayr and Molkenthin, 2004 ). Women also have a higher flow experience during an ultra-marathon than men (Wollseiffen et al, 2016 ).…”

Psychological States Underlying Excellent Performance in Sport: Toward an Integrated Model of Flow and Clutch States

“…To date, studies examining contexts for flow in sport have referred to differences between types of sport (e.g., Jackson, Thomas, Marsh, & Smethurst, 2001) or between training and competition (Koehn & Morris, 2014). Recent research has also found that flow tends to occur during the early or middle stages of performance for professional golfers (Swann et al, 2016) and, for example, in the first hour of a 6-hr run for ultramarathon runners (Wollseiffen et al, 2016). Our findings indicate that flow can occur at any time during a performance provided the context is uncertain, is novel, or requires experimentation and the athlete experiences a buildup in confidence.…”

Influence of exercise duration on cardiorespiratory responses, energy cost and tissue oxygenation within a 6 hour treadmill run

“…The duration of exercise was selected for comparison with previous literature (Millet et al, 2000; Vernillo et al, 2015), including a study having measured decreased PFC activity (Wollseiffen et al, 2016), and to correspond to the acute phase of alterations in and C r observed in a previous study (Gimenez et al, 2013). To establish the specific effect of exercise duration, we aimed to measure the selected parameters at a moderate intensity (Gaesser & Poole, 1996) corresponding to the expected average speed of a group of trained ultramarathon runners, and at a heavy exercise intensity (Gaesser & Poole, 1996) minimizing the contribution of eccentric contractions to mechanical work, i.e., uphill (Minetti, Ardigo & Saibene, 1994).…”