Burgos Pablo I, Cruz Gabriela, Hawkes Teresa, Rojas-Sepúlveda Ignacia, Woollacott Marjorie
Department of Neuroscience, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
Department of Physical Therapy, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
Front Psychol. 2021 Feb 23;12:569025. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.569025. eCollection 2021.
Physical and mental training are associated with positive effects on executive functions throughout the lifespan. However, evidence of the benefits of combined physical and mental regimes over a sedentary lifestyle remain sparse. The goal of this study was to investigate potential mechanisms, from a source-resolved event-related-potential perspective, that could explain how practicing long-term physical and mental exercise can benefit neural processing during the execution of an attention switching task. Fifty-three healthy community volunteers who self-reported long-term practice of Tai Chi ( = 10), meditation + exercise ( = 16), simple aerobics ( = 15), or a sedentary lifestyle ( = 12), aged 47.8 ± 14.6 (SD) were included in this analysis. All participants undertook high-density electroencephalography recording during a switch paradigm. Our results indicate that people who practice physical and mental exercise perform better in a task-switching paradigm. Our analysis revealed an additive effect of the combined practice of physical and mental exercise over physical exercise only. In addition, we confirmed the participation of frontal, parietal and cingulate areas as generators of event-related-potential components (N2-like and P3-like) commonly associated to the performance of switch tasks. Particularly, the N2-like component of the parietal and frontal domains showed significantly greater amplitudes in the exercise and mental training groups compared with aerobics and sedentary groups. Furthermore, we showed better performance associated with greater N2-like amplitudes. Our multivariate analysis revealed that activity type was the most relevant factor to explain the difference between groups, with an important influence of age, and body mass index, and with small effects of educational years, cardiovascular capacity, and sex. These results suggest that chronic combined physical and mental training may confer significant benefits to executive function in normally aging adults, probably through more efficient early attentional processing. Future experimental studies are needed to confirm our results and understand the mechanisms on parieto-frontal networks that contribute to the cognitive improvement associated with practicing combined mental and aerobic exercise, while carefully controlling confounding factors, such as age and body mass index.
身体和心理训练在人的一生中都与对执行功能的积极影响相关。然而，相较于久坐不动的生活方式，身心结合训练的益处的证据仍然稀少。本研究的目的是从源解析事件相关电位的角度，探究可能解释长期进行身体和心理锻炼如何在执行注意力转换任务期间使神经处理受益的潜在机制。本分析纳入了53名健康的社区志愿者，他们自我报告长期练习太极拳（n = 10）、冥想 + 锻炼（n = 16）、简单有氧运动（n = 15）或久坐不动的生活方式（n = 12），年龄为47.8 ± 14.6（标准差）。所有参与者在转换范式期间进行了高密度脑电图记录。我们的结果表明，进行身体和心理锻炼的人在任务转换范式中表现更好。我们的分析揭示了身心结合锻炼相较于仅进行体育锻炼具有累加效应。此外，我们证实了额叶、顶叶和扣带区域作为与转换任务表现通常相关的事件相关电位成分（类N2和类P3）的产生源的参与。特别是，与有氧运动组和久坐组相比，顶叶和额叶区域的类N2成分在锻炼和心理训练组中显示出明显更大的波幅。此外，我们表明更好的表现与更大的类N2波幅相关。我们的多变量分析表明，活动类型是解释组间差异的最相关因素，年龄、体重指数有重要影响，受教育年限、心血管能力和性别有较小影响。这些结果表明，长期的身心结合训练可能通过更高效的早期注意力处理，为正常衰老的成年人的执行功能带来显著益处。未来需要进行实验研究来证实我们的结果，并了解顶叶 - 额叶网络中有助于与身心结合有氧运动练习相关的认知改善的机制，同时仔细控制年龄和体重指数等混杂因素。
