Activité physique et processus cognitifs : aspects cérébraux et comportementaux

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Faire du sport, remède au déclin des capacités d’apprentissage ?

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L'exercice physique permet-il vraiment une meilleure oxygénation cérébrale des seniors?

Les meilleures performances cognitives des femmes de plus de 60 ans ayant une bonne condition physique aérobie (endurance) seraient bien liées à un plus fort approvisionnement en hémoglobine oxygénée dans le cortex préfrontal dorsolatéral

L’influence de l’exercice physique sur l’activité métabolique cérébrale

National audienceLe maintien d’une activité physique régulière et d’une bonne condition physique (cardiorespiratoire et sensorimotrice) est depuis longtemps reconnu comme un élément essentiel du management de la santé physique, mentale et cognitive chez l’Homme, particulièrement lors de périodes critiques de l’ontogenèse (enfance et sénescence). De nombreuses études épidémiologiques, transversales et interventionnelles présentent des arguments convaincants démontrant les effets prophylactiques de l’exercice physique sur la santé cognitive et cérébrale des enfants mais aussi au cours duvieillissement normal et même dans la prévention de certaines maladies neurodégénératives ou leur prise en charge non-médicamenteuse. Depuis le début des années 2000, un certain nombre de travaux s’attachent à décrire et mieuxcomprendre les mécanismes neurophysiologiques responsables des effets bénéfiques de l’exercice physique sur la vitalité cognitive. Dans cet article, nous focaliserons notreattention sur l’influence de l’exercice physique régulier sur l’activité métabolique et la plasticité cérébrales, particulièrement dans le cadre du vieillissement où les recherchessont les plus avancées

Processing speed

International audienceProcessing speed is the rate at which fundamental cognitive operations can be carried out. Processing speed is involved in everyone's daily functioning and increases throughout childhood until young adulthood and declines slowly thereafter. This entry presents the state of the art concerning the research about this processing resource. After having addressed how processing speed can be accurately and independently measured, the emphasis will be on the relationships processing speed maintains with other higher order cognitive functions, such as fluid intelligence, and how this cognitive process is affected by normal aging

L’exercice physique, un modérateur du vieillissement cérébral et cognitif

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Instruction in Learning a Temporal Pattern on an Anticipation-Coincidence Task

International audienceUsing a computer-simulated anticipation-coincidence task, the main aim of the study was to examine the effect of the type of instruction on learning a temporal pattern. For this task, participants must learn to anticipate the appropriate time to launch a projectile to hit a moving target. The experiment involved three instructional conditions. In the Explicit-rule Discover Instruction Condition participants were informed that target speed could change from trial to trial and that change is controlled by a regular pattern. Their task was then to search, to identify, and to use such pattern to enhance their anticipation. In the Explicit-Informative Instruction Condition, participants were, however, allowed before practice to examine attentively the regular pattern. Participants were also explicitly urged to use the pattern they observed to ensure a better interception of the target. Finally, in the Implicit Instruction Condition, participants were only informed that their task was to hit, or at least, to place the projectile as near as possible to the target. No additional information was provided about the target's behaviour. Analysis indicated that learning the temporal pattern was more important in Implicit than in Explicit-rule Discover Instruction Condition. However, the Explicit-Informative Instruction Condition produced unambiguously the highest learning. Overall, the study highlights the role of information over guidance in the understanding of the effect of the instructions on learning. Finally, we discussed the implications of these results on the comprehension of the variability of the effects of the instruction on learning

Vieillissement, Exercice et Cognition : les connexions entre cœur et cerveau

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Sensory-based mechanism for delayed motor intention.

International audienceProspective motor learning (PML) can be defined as learning an action to be performed in the future. The privileged retrieval mechanism behind this delayed motor performance remains unknown. From a motor control and learning perspective, we may conceive of two forms of retrieval: a stimulus- and an intention-based control. Retrieval from intention-based control is based on the anticipation of intended sensory effects related to an action in order to select and control the appropriate motor procedure (i.e., the ideomotor mechanism). In contrast, in a stimulus-based control a connection between stimuli-features and their related action-features is stored in the memory and serves as the retrieval mechanism. In this view, action retrieval from external stimuli is based on the detection of events in the environment to perform the intended behaviour (i.e., the sensorimotor mechanism). In this study, we report an advantage in the action retrieval for participants who use an intention-based mode of control in comparison to a stimulus-based control. Furthermore, a control task reveals that the intention-based advantage is specific to PML. Our findings show that PML is benefited by mental anticipation of a sensory effect that is efficiently processed through an ideomotor mechanism to fulfil delayed motor intentions