Acute Effects of Instructed and Self-Created Variable Rope Skipping on EEG Brain Activity and Heart Rate Variability

The influence of physical activity on brain and heart activity dependent on type and intensity of exercise is meanwhile widely accepted. Mainly cyclic exercises with longer duration formed the basis for showing the influence on either central nervous system or on heart metabolism. Effects of the variability of movement sequences on brain and heart have been studied only sparsely so far. This study investigated effects of three different motor learning approaches combined with a single bout of rope skipping exercises on the spontaneous electroencephalographic (EEG) brain activity, heart rate variability (HRV) and the rate of perceived exertion (RPE). Participants performed repetitive learning (RL) and two extremely variable rope skipping schedules according to the differential learning approach. Thereby one bout was characterized by instructed variable learning (DLi) and the other by self-created variable learning (DLc) in randomized order each on three consecutive days. The results show higher RPE after DLi and DLc than after RL. HRV analysis demonstrates significant changes in pre–post exercise comparison in all training approaches. No statistically significant differences between training schedules were identified. Slightly greater changes in HRV parameters were observed in both DL approaches indicating a higher activation of the sympathetic nervous system. EEG data reveals higher parietal alpha1 and temporal alpha2 power in RL compared to both DL schedules immediately post exercise. During the recovery of up to 30 min, RL shows higher temporal and occipital theta, temporal, parietal and occipital alpha, temporal and occipital beta and frontal beta3 power. In conclusion, already a single bout of 3 min of rope skipping can lead to brain states that are associated with being advantageous for cognitive learning. Combined with additional, cognitively demanding tasks in form of the DL approach, it seems to lead to an overload of the mental capacity, at least on the short term. Further research should fathom the reciprocal influence of cardiac and central-nervous strain in greater detail.