Summary: New research finds that perhaps one bouts of intense exercise can improve mental performance in young people, particularly in memory, focus, and executive functioning. High-intensity interval training ( HIIT ) and cycling yielded the most substantial cognitive benefits, especially when lasting under 30 minutes. Although the mental improve was tepid, it suggests that quick, vigorous exercise does have a stronger impact on brain function than originally thought.
Important Facts:
- Aggressive activities, particularly HIIT and riding, showed the largest effects on mental efficiency.
- More mental benefits were observed for shorter than 30 minute workout sessions.
- Executive work saw the most improvement, particularly when tested quickly after exercise.
Origin: UC Santa Barbara
The general consensus is that consistent practice over the long run will improve both physical and mental performance, according to decades of research into training. But what about one bursts of exercising? A team of scientists from UC Santa Barbara examined the situation more closely.
Their review,” A systematic review and Bayesian meta-analysis provide information for an effect of serious physical activity on consciousness in fresh people”, was  , just published , in Communications Psychology.  ,
According to Barry Giesbrecht, a professor in the Department of Psychological &, Brain Sciences and senior author of the study, one of the most consistent results in the writing is that exercise treatments, like a plan you may take three days a week over several months or years, strengthen cognition and even promote neurogenesis ( the formation of new neurons in the brain ).
However, studies of the effects of single, intense exercises are much more contradictory.
First author Jordan Garrett, who graduated with his Ph. D., concentrated on subjects ranging from 18 to 45 years old. D. from the department in June— and Giesbrecht’s team at the , UCSB Attention Lab , screened thousands of exercise studies published between 1995 and 2023 to determine the consistent trends in the literature.
Based on the results of their modeling approach, cycling and high intensity interval training ( HIIT ) produced the most consistent effects in improvement of memory, attention, executive function, information processing and other cognitive functions.  ,
” We found that vigorous activities had the largest effects”, Giesbrecht said.
” Also, the effects were strongest for studies that tested cognition after exercise, as opposed to during exercise”, he added.
” And lastly, exercise that is only 30 minutes long had a longer impact than exercise that is longer than 30 minutes. Our study provided the strongest evidence for a positive effect on cognition from individual exercise sessions, and it also revealed that this evidence was impacted by a range of variables.
The team’s findings included that the key cognitive domain that was impacted by vigorous exercise, such as HIIT protocols, was executive functioning, according to project scientist Tom Bullock and graduate student Carly Chak.  ,
The overall effect of a single exercise session was generally on the small side, according to Giesbrecht, noting that the variations between the experiments are typically small because they are typically measured when the physical activity is not related to the cognitive task.
This raises the “intriguing” hypothesis, he added, that perhaps using tasks that require the integration of actions of our body and cognitive systems may result in more pronounced benefits.  ,  ,  ,  ,
Giesbrecht and his team intend to test this concept” through a combination of lab tasks and real-world activities,” he said.
About this news article on cognitive and exercise research
Author: Keith Hamm
Source: UC Santa Barbara
Contact: Keith Hamm – UC Santa Barbara
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
By Barry Giesbrecht and colleagues,” A systematic review and a Bayesian meta-analysis provide evidence for an effect on cognition in young adults.” Communications Psychology
Abstract
Evidence for the impact of acute physical activity on cognition in young adults has been provided by a systematic review and a Bayesian meta-analysis.
A potential intervention for improving cognitive function throughout life is physical activity. Studies using single acute bouts have had mixed results, despite the consistent evidence that long-term exercise interventions have had positive effects on cognition.
Here, a systematic review and meta-analysis were carried out to examine how acute exercise affected young adults ‘ ability to perform cognitive tasks.
By combining the effect sizes of 651 studies from PsychInfo and Google Scholar, which included 4, 390 participants, a Bayesian hierarchical model quantified probabilistic evidence for a modulatory relationship.
Publication bias was mitigated using the trim-and-fill method. Acute exercise was found to have a small beneficial effect on cognition ( g = 0.13 ± 0.04, BF = 3.67 ) and decrease reaction time.
Working memory and inhibition improvements were discovered in a meta-analysis of tasks that only included executive function tasks. Multiple priors and likelihood functions provided consistent meta-analytic estimates.
Because many activities have aerobic and anaerobic components, physical activities were classified according to type of exercise ( e .g., cycling ). However, this method may restrict comparison to studies that categorize activities based on metabolic demands.
The current study provides up-to-date information on the validity of the literature regarding the impact of acute exercise on cognition.
The US Army Research Office provided funding.
