Hussey Erika K, Fontes Eduardo B, Ward Nathan, Westfall Daniel R, Kao Shih-Chun, Kramer Arthur F, Hillman Charles H
Soldier Performance Optimization Directorate, US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center, Natick, MA 01760, USA.
Center for Applied Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155, USA.
J Clin Med. 2020 May 10;9(5):1410. doi: 10.3390/jcm9051410.
Acute cognitive enhancement has been sought by healthy young individuals to improve academic and professional performance. Among several methods, physical exercise interventions and transcranial direct current brain stimulation (tDCS) have shown promise in impacting executive functions. Here, we observed a set of new findings about the causal effect of acute aerobic exercise and tDCS across three facets of executive function: Inhibition (as measured by a flanker task) was selectively impacted by acute aerobic exercise but not tDCS, whereas working memory (as measured by an n-back task) was impacted by both acute aerobic exercise and tDCS, with effects emerging on distinct processing components for each manipulation. Sustained attention (as measured by the Mackworth clock task), on the other hand, was not impacted by acute aerobic exercise or tDCS. Interestingly, no effects of combining acute aerobic exercise and tDCS emerged. We argue that understanding the unique and combined contributions of these cognitive enhancement techniques can not only contribute to a deeper mechanistic explanation in healthy individuals but also inform future research with clinical and aging populations.
健康的年轻人一直在寻求急性认知增强方法来提高学业和职业表现。在多种方法中，体育锻炼干预和经颅直流电刺激（tDCS）已显示出对执行功能有影响的潜力。在此，我们观察到了一组关于急性有氧运动和tDCS对执行功能三个方面因果效应的新发现：抑制（通过侧翼任务测量）仅受急性有氧运动的选择性影响，而不受tDCS影响；工作记忆（通过n-back任务测量）则受到急性有氧运动和tDCS两者的影响，且每种操作对不同处理成分产生影响。另一方面，持续注意力（通过麦夸里时钟任务测量）不受急性有氧运动或tDCS的影响。有趣的是，急性有氧运动和tDCS联合使用没有产生效果。我们认为，了解这些认知增强技术的独特和联合作用，不仅有助于对健康个体进行更深入的机制解释，还能为未来针对临床和老年人群的研究提供参考。
