The relationship between childhood aerobic fitness and brain functional connectivity

AbstractSeveral studies have indicated that higher levels of childhood aerobic fitness is associated with superior cognitive function, and this association is disproportionately observed in tasks requiring greater top-down control. We designed the current study to clarify the relationship between childhood fitness and top-down control in terms of functional connectivity among brain regions, by evaluating phase-locking values (PLVs), which is a measure of frequency-specific phase synchrony between electroencephalographic signals during a visual search task. Lower-fit and higher-fit children performed a visual search task that included feature search and conjunction search conditions. The conjunction search condition required greater top-down control to reduce interference from task-irrelevant distractors that shared a basic feature with the target. Results indicated that higher-fit children exhibited higher response accuracy relative to lower-fit children across search conditions. The results of PLVs showed that higher-fit children had greater functional connectivity for the conjunction relative to the feature search condition, whereas lower-fit children showed no difference in functional connectivity between search conditions. Furthermore, PLVs showed different time courses between groups; that is, higher-fit children sustained upregulation of top-down control throughout the task period, whereas lower-fit children transiently upregulated top-down control after stimulus onset and could not sustain the upregulation. These findings suggest that higher levels of childhood aerobic fitness is related to brain functional connectivity involved in the sustained upregulation of top-down control

Foreshadowing of Performance Accuracy by Event-Related Potentials: Evidence from a Minimal-Conflict Task

Recent studies employing stimulus-response compatibility tasks suggest that an increase in the amplitude of the positive deflection of the response-locked event-related potential (ERP) foreshadows errors on forthcoming trials. However, no studies have tested the generalizability of error-foreshadowing positivity to tasks without stimulus-response interference.The present study adopted an alternating-response task, in which the participants responded to the pointing direction of an arrowhead (up or down). Although the arrowhead direction alternated for the majority of trials (95%), occasionally this pattern was broken by a repeated stimulus, termed a lure trial. We compared the matched-reaction-time correct-preceding ERP with the error-preceding ERP on lure-preceding trials. There was no evidence that errors are foreshadowed by the increase of a positive electroencephalogram (EEG) deflection. To the contrary, analyses of ERPs time-locked to electromyogram (EMG) onset on the five consecutive lure-preceding trials showed larger positive deflections on correct-preceding than error-preceding trials. The post-response negativity did not differ between correct-preceding and error-preceding trials.These results suggest that in minimal conflict tasks a decreased positivity may foreshadow incorrect performance several trials prior to the error, possibly reflecting the waning of task-related efforts. Therefore, error-foreshadowing brain signals may be task-specific

Association between aerobic fitness and attentional functions in Egyptian preadolescent children

Growing evidence indicates that culture and education can influence cognitive constructs. Studies targeting Western and Asian populations have shown a positive relationship between aerobic fitness and cognitive control in children; however, this association has yet to be explored in the Arab world. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between aerobic fitness and attentional networks in Egyptian preadolescent children. In total, 103 preadolescent children (9.76 ± 0.11) completed an assessment of aerobic fitness using a 6-min running test and a computerized attention network test that allowed for assessing alerting, orienting, and executive networks. The results revealed that higher aerobic fitness was associated with shorter response time and higher response accuracy in a more cognitively demanding task condition (i.e., incongruent trials). Furthermore, higher aerobic fitness was associated with a more efficient executive network. No associations were observed for alerting and orienting networks. These findings corroborate growing evidence indicating the importance of aerobic fitness for cognitive development and extend the literature by suggesting that the positive association between aerobic fitness and cognitive control might be generalized to the Arab population and not significantly change across cultures

Fitness and ERP indices of cognitive control mode during task preparation in preadolescent children

A growing number of studies conducted over the past decade have demonstrated that greater aerobic fitness is associated with superior cognitive control in preadolescent children. Several studies have suggested that the relationship between fitness and cognitive control may be attributed to differential reliance on proactive versus reactive cognitive control modes. However, this contention has remained speculative, and further studies are needed to better elucidate this relationship. We designed the present study to test the hypothesis that use of cognitive control modes would differ as a function of childhood fitness. We compared performance of lower-fit and higher-fit children on a modified AX-continuous performance task, commonly used to examine shifts in the use of proactive and reactive control, along with cue-P3 and contingent negative variation (CNV) of event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Results indicated that higher-fit children exhibited greater response accuracy for BX (nontarget cue - target probe) relative to AY (target cue - nontarget probe) trials, whereas lower-fit children had comparable response accuracies for AY and BX trials. Because enhanced BX performance and impaired AY performance may be attributed to the proactive use of context information, these results suggest that greater childhood fitness is associated with more effective utilization of proactive control. Higher-fit children also exhibited larger cue-P3 amplitude and smaller CNV amplitude for BX relative to AY trials, with no such effect of trial type in lower-fit children. These ERP results suggest that greater fitness is associated with more effective utilization of cue information and response preparation more appropriate to trial type, supporting the behavioral findings. The present study provides novel insights into the relationship between fitness and cognition from the perspective of cognitive control mode during task preparation

The Association of Childhood Fitness to Proactive and Reactive Action Monitoring.

Several studies have claimed that the positive association between childhood fitness and cognitive control is attributable to differences in the child's cognitive control strategy, which can involve either proactive or reactive control. The present study tested this hypothesis by manipulating the probability of trial types during a modified flanker task. Preadolescent children performed mostly congruent and mostly incongruent conditions of the flanker task, with post-error task performance and error negativity/error-related negativity (Ne/ERN) being assessed. Results indicated that greater aerobic fitness was related to greater post-error accuracy and larger Ne/ERN amplitudes in the mostly congruent condition. These findings suggest that higher-fit children might be able to transiently upregulate cognitive control by recruiting reactive control in the mostly congruent condition. Further, greater fitness was related to greater modulation of Ne/ERN amplitude between conditions, suggesting that higher-fit children engaged in more proactive control in the mostly incongruent condition. This study supports the hypothesis that greater childhood fitness is associated with a more flexible shift between reactive and proactive modes of cognitive control to adapt to varying task demands

The Nervous System as a Pathway for Exercise to Improve Social Cognition

Specific nervous system functions and the regulating roles of oxytocin have evolved because of the necessity to negotiate increasingly complex social systems. We hypothesize that acute and long-term physical activity and exercise have the potential to benefit social cognitive abilities, such as emotion recognition and regulation, by operating on these functions

The relation of physical activity to functional connectivity between brain regions”, Clin Neurophysiol,

a b s t r a c t Objective: To investigate the relation of physical activity to functional connectivity between brain regions during an executive control task using phase-locking values (PLVs) and a graph theoretical analysis. Methods: Twenty active and 20 sedentary young adults had their electroencephalograms recorded during a spatial priming task. The positive and negative priming conditions require greater amounts of executive control to inhibit previous trial information relative to control condition. Results: Beta band PLVs during the priming conditions were larger relative to the control condition 300-400 ms after stimulus onset only in the active group, suggesting that physically active individuals have greater functional connectivity between brain regions during task conditions requiring greater amounts of executive control. Further, graph theoretical analysis was conducted for the PLVs in the 300-400 ms post-stimulus epoch, with analyses indicating that physical activity is associated with the strength of functional connectivity between brain regions rather than the structure of network. Conclusions: Greater functional connectivity between brain regions and efficiency of neural network are potential mechanisms for the positive relation of physical activity to cognitive function. Significance: The present study suggests that PLVs and graph theoretical analysis is a useful tool to investigate the relation of physical activity on human cognition

How children with neurodevelopmental disorders can benefit from the neurocognitive effects of exercise

Exercise is an integral part of children's lives, and research in educational settings has found that regular engagement promises improvements in executive function (i.e. top-down control of goal-directed behavior). Based on recent advances in understanding the moderators and the neurocognitive mechanisms of these effects, we highlight a potential application of exercise in the treatment of executive dysfunction. Even though different neurodevelopmental disorders are characterized by a heterogeneity in core symptoms, children affected by these disorders often face common executive function deficits. So far, exercise has not been recognized as an alternative or additional treatment for this specific cognitive impairment. The limited experimental evidence in children with neurodevelopmental disorders provides a first indication that regular exercise engagement benefits executive function. However, we identified key research questions that need to be answered before a prescription of exercise to children with executive dysfunction can be encouraged in clinical practice