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The impact of physical exercise on convergent and divergent thinking

Anecdotal literature suggests that creative people sometimes use bodily movement to help overcome mental blocks and lack of inspiration. Several studies have shown that physical exercise may sometimes enhance creative thinking, but the evidence is still inconclusive. In this study we investigated wh...

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Autores principales: S. Colzato, Lorenza, Szapora, Ayca, Pannekoek, Justine N., Hommel, Bernhard
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3845014/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24348370
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00824
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author S. Colzato, Lorenza
Szapora, Ayca
Pannekoek, Justine N.
Hommel, Bernhard
author_facet S. Colzato, Lorenza
Szapora, Ayca
Pannekoek, Justine N.
Hommel, Bernhard
author_sort S. Colzato, Lorenza
collection PubMed
description Anecdotal literature suggests that creative people sometimes use bodily movement to help overcome mental blocks and lack of inspiration. Several studies have shown that physical exercise may sometimes enhance creative thinking, but the evidence is still inconclusive. In this study we investigated whether creativity in convergent- and divergent-thinking tasks is affected by acute moderate and intense physical exercise in athletes (n = 48) and non-athletes (n = 48). Exercise interfered with divergent thinking in both groups. The impact on convergent thinking, the task that presumably required more cognitive control, depended on the training level: while in non-athletes performance was significantly impaired by exercise, athletes showed a benefit that approached significance. The findings suggest that acute exercise may affect both, divergent and convergent thinking. In particular, it seems to affect control-hungry tasks through exercise-induced “ego-depletion,” which however is less pronounced in individuals with higher levels of physical fitness, presumably because of the automatization of movement control, fitness-related neuroenergetic benefits, or both.
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spelling pubmed-38450142013-12-13 The impact of physical exercise on convergent and divergent thinking S. Colzato, Lorenza Szapora, Ayca Pannekoek, Justine N. Hommel, Bernhard Front Hum Neurosci Neuroscience Anecdotal literature suggests that creative people sometimes use bodily movement to help overcome mental blocks and lack of inspiration. Several studies have shown that physical exercise may sometimes enhance creative thinking, but the evidence is still inconclusive. In this study we investigated whether creativity in convergent- and divergent-thinking tasks is affected by acute moderate and intense physical exercise in athletes (n = 48) and non-athletes (n = 48). Exercise interfered with divergent thinking in both groups. The impact on convergent thinking, the task that presumably required more cognitive control, depended on the training level: while in non-athletes performance was significantly impaired by exercise, athletes showed a benefit that approached significance. The findings suggest that acute exercise may affect both, divergent and convergent thinking. In particular, it seems to affect control-hungry tasks through exercise-induced “ego-depletion,” which however is less pronounced in individuals with higher levels of physical fitness, presumably because of the automatization of movement control, fitness-related neuroenergetic benefits, or both. Frontiers Media S.A. 2013-12-02 /pmc/articles/PMC3845014/ /pubmed/24348370 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00824 Text en Copyright © 2013 Colzato, Szapora, Pannekoek and Hommel. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
S. Colzato, Lorenza
Szapora, Ayca
Pannekoek, Justine N.
Hommel, Bernhard
The impact of physical exercise on convergent and divergent thinking
title The impact of physical exercise on convergent and divergent thinking
title_full The impact of physical exercise on convergent and divergent thinking
title_fullStr The impact of physical exercise on convergent and divergent thinking
title_full_unstemmed The impact of physical exercise on convergent and divergent thinking
title_short The impact of physical exercise on convergent and divergent thinking
title_sort impact of physical exercise on convergent and divergent thinking
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3845014/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24348370
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00824
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