A Single Bout of Aerobic Exercise Provides an Immediate “Boost” to Cognitive Flexibility
Matthew Heath, Diksha Shukla
Abstract
Executive function includes the core components of working memory, inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility. A wealth of studies have shown that working memory and inhibitory control are improved following a single bout of exercise; however, a paucity – and equivocal – body of work has demonstrated a similar benefit for cognitive flexibility. Cognitive flexibility underlies switching between different attentional- and motor-related goals, and a potential limitation of previous work examining this component in an exercise context is that they included tasks involving non-executive processes (i.e., numerosity, parity and language judgments). To address this issue, Experiment 1 employed a 20-min bout of aerobic exercise and examined pre- and immediate post-exercise cognitive flexibility via stimulus-driven (SD) and minimally delayed (MD) saccades ordered in an AABB task-switching paradigm. SD saccades are a standard task requiring a response at target onset, whereas MD saccades are a non-standard and top-down task requiring a response only after the target is extinguished. Work has shown that RTs for a SD saccade preceded by a MD saccade are longer than when a SD saccade is preceded by its same task-type, whereas the converse switch does not influence performance (i.e., the unidirectional switch-cost). Experiment 1 yielded a 28 ms and 8 ms unidirectional switch-cost pre- and post-exercise, respectively (ps<.001); however, the magnitude of the switch-cost was reduced post-exercise (p=.005). Experiment 2 involved a non-exercise control condition and yielded a reliable and equivalent magnitude unidirectional switch-cost at a pre- (28 ms) and post-break (26 ms) assessment (ps<.001). Accordingly, a single-bout of exercise improved task-switching efficiency and thereby provides convergent evidence that exercise can provide a global benefit to the core components of executive function.