Summary: New research finds that even single bouts of intense exercise can improve cognitive performance in young adults, particularly in memory, attention, and executive functioning. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) and cycling yielded the most substantial cognitive benefits, especially when lasting under 30 minutes. While the cognitive boost was modest, it suggests that brief, vigorous exercise may have a more immediate effect on brain function than previously thought.
Key Facts:
- Vigorous activities, especially HIIT and cycling, showed the largest effects on cognitive performance.
- Exercise sessions shorter than 30 minutes produced greater cognitive benefits than longer sessions.
- Executive function saw the most improvement, especially when tested shortly after exercise.
Source: UC Santa Barbara
Decades of exercise research data support the common view that steady workouts over the long haul produce not only physical benefits but also improved brain function. But what about single bursts of exercise? A team of scientists at UC Santa Barbara has taken a closer look.
Their study, “A systematic review and Bayesian meta-analysis provide evidence for an effect of acute physical activity on cognition in young adults,” was recently published in Communications Psychology.
“One of the most consistent findings in the literature is that exercise interventions — something like a program that you would engage in, say, three times a week over several months or years — improve cognition and can even promote neurogenesis (the process by which new neurons are formed in the brain),” said Barry Giesbrecht, a professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences and senior author of the study.
“But studies looking at the effects of single, acute bouts of exercise are much more mixed.”
Focusing on subjects between 18–45 years old, first author Jordan Garrett — who graduated with his Ph.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, the effects of exercise less than 30 minutes in duration were bigger than those that went beyond 30 minutes. Our work showed the strongest evidence for a positive effect of single bouts of exercise on cognition and that this evidence was impacted by a variety of factors.”
Also among their findings, the team — including project scientist Tom Bullock and graduate student Carly Chak — discovered that executive functioning was the key cognitive domain impacted by vigorous exercise, such as HIIT protocols.
“I think that the other intriguing result is that the overall effect of a single bout of exercise was generally on the small side,” Giesbrecht said, noting that besides the variability across the experiments, the enhancements may also be 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 are planning to put this idea to the test “using a combination of lab tasks and real-world activities,” he said.
About this exercise and cognition research news
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.
“A systematic review and Bayesian meta-analysis provide evidence for an effect of acute physical activity on cognition in young adults” by Barry Giesbrecht et al. Communications Psychology
Abstract
A systematic review and Bayesian meta-analysis provide evidence for an effect of acute physical activity on cognition in young adults
Physical exercise is a potential intervention for enhancing cognitive function across the lifespan. However, while studies employing long-term exercise interventions consistently show positive effects on cognition, studies using single acute bouts have produced mixed results.
Here, a systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to determine the impact of acute exercise on cognitive task performance in healthy young adults.
A Bayesian hierarchical model quantified probabilistic evidence for a modulatory relationship by synthesizing 651 effect sizes from 113 studies from PsychInfo and Google Scholar representing 4,390 participants.
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.
A meta-analysis restricted to executive function tasks revealed improvements in working memory and inhibition. Meta-analytic estimates were consistent across multiple priors and likelihood functions.
Physical activities were categorized based on exercise type (e.g., cycling) because many activities have aerobic and anaerobic components, but this approach may limit comparison to studies that categorize activities based on metabolic demands.
The current study provides an updated synthesis of the existing literature and insights into the robustness of acute exercise-induced effects on cognition.
Funding provided by the United States Army Research Office.
