The Effect Of Acute Hihg-intensity Intermittent Exercise On Working Memory

PURPOSE: Assess the influence of an acute bout of high-intensity intermittent exercise on the executive control of working memory. METHODS: Thirty-four 9- to 11-year-old children participated in the study, 15 were randomly allocated in a control group and 19 in an experimental group. All parents of the children signed a written informed consent. The experimental procedure was conducted by repeated measures PRE-POST-POST 30 minutes after performing high-intensity exercise. An N-back paradigm was applied to evaluate working memory. Participants were required to monitor a series of pictures and to press the “space” key whenever a given stimulus was the same that the one presented N trials before. Two cognitive loads were presented, in the 1-back condition the target was any stimulus that matched the one immediately before, and in the 2-back condition. For each trial, the number of hits (response to target) and the hit reaction times were recorded. High-intensity exercise was performed through the administration of a standardized gradual intermittent Yo-Yo test. RESULTS: Men in the control group had a lower number of hits in the post-test immediately after the exercise compared to pre-test (p = 0.012), while the experimental group had a greater number of hits in the post-test immediately after the exercise (p = 0.041,) and in the post-test 30 minutes after exercise (p = 0.046) compared to the pre-test. Women in the experimental group had a greater number of hits in the post-test 30 minutes after exercise compared to pre-test (p = 0.025) as well as in the post-test 30 minutes after exercise compared to post-test immediately after exercise (p ≤ 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: Exercise significantly increased the number of correct answers and decreased the number of omissions (no response to the target) in the working memory test compared to a control situation. This could suggest that submaximal exercise increased frontal neuronal activation related to executive control of working memory.