Impact of Acute Physical Exercise on Cognitive Performance

Abstract

Numerous studies have found that aerobic endurance exercise increases neural activation and reduces reaction times suggesting that acute bouts of exercise may selectively boost executive function performance involving inhibitory control and attention. The objective of the presented study was to understand the concrete impact of a “standardised incremental exercise test to exhaustion” on certain cognitive functions, such as, sustained attention, and flexibility in the reaction behaviour. The results of the intervention demonstrate that reactive resilience increased (p=.008**) and reaction time was reduced (p<.001***) under application of the Determination Test (DT). Nevertheless, the number of errors increased but not in a significant manner (p>.05). The results of the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) showed that the reaction times were significantly decreasing as well (p=.002**), however, the errors in terms of “false starts” were significantly increasing (p=.002**). This research study demonstrates that acute physical exercise had a measurable impact on the cognitive performance of the participants. In particular, the PVT reported a statistically significant detrimental impact that refers to changes in sustained attention.