The Acute Effects of Aerobic Exercise on the Functional Connectivity of Human Brain Networks

Although there is promising evidence that regular physical activity could counteract age-related decline in cognitive and brain function, the mechanisms for this neuroprotection remain unclear. The acute effects of exercise can provide insight into the mechanisms by which the brain adapts to habitual exercise by reflecting transient modulations of systems that would subsequently accumulate long-term adaptations through repeated training sessions. However, methodological limitations have hindered the mechanistic insight gained from previous studies examining acute exercise effects on the human brain. In the current study, we tested the plasticity of functional brain networks in response to a single stimulus of aerobic exercise using resting-state functional connectivity analyses. In a sample of healthy younger (N = 12; age = 23.2 years; 6 females) and older adults (N = 13; age = 66.3 years; 6 females), we found that 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic cycling selectively increased synchrony among brain regions associated with affect and reward processing, learning and memory, and in regions important for attention and executive control. Importantly, these changes did not occur when the same participants completed a passive, motor-driven control condition. Our results suggest that these transient increases in synchrony serve as a possible avenue for systematically investigating the effects of various exercise parameters on specific brain systems, which may accelerate mechanistic discoveries about the benefits of exercise on brain and cognitive function.