General physical activity levels influence positive and negative priming effects in young adults

OBJECTIVE To investigate the relationship between general physical activity level and the cognitive functions of executive control in young adults using behavioral measures and event-related brain potentials. METHODS Forty young adults (mean age=21.1 yrs; 19 females) were differentiated on the basis of their regular physical activity level into two groups: active and sedentary. They performed a spatial priming task consisting of three conditions: control, positive, and negative priming. Spatial priming effects, which are related to executive control and occur automatically, were assessed as indicators of cognitive functioning. RESULTS Negative priming effects on reaction time and P3 latency in the active group were larger than in the sedentary group. By contrast, positive priming effects were only observed in the sedentary group. CONCLUSIONS The cognitive effects of regular physical activity could be observed using a relatively simple paradigm. The results indicate that regular physical activity has a beneficial effect on the cognitive processes on executive control in young adults. SIGNIFICANCE The present study provides additional evidence of the beneficial effects of regular physical activity on cognitive functioning in young adults.

[1]  Arthur F. Kramer,et al.  Physical Activity and Executive Control: Implications for Increased Cognitive Health during Older Adulthood , 2004, Research quarterly for exercise and sport.

[2]  Robert W. Proctor,et al.  Stimulus-Response Compatibility: An Integrated Perspective , 1990 .

[3]  Cynthia P. May,et al.  Determinants of negative priming. , 1995, Psychological bulletin.

[4]  Diane L. Filion,et al.  Inhibitory processes in cognition and aging , 1995 .

[5]  Margot J. Taylor,et al.  Guidelines for using human event-related potentials to study cognition: recording standards and publication criteria. , 2000, Psychophysiology.

[6]  J. Polich,et al.  Meta-analysis of P300 normative aging studies. , 1996, Psychophysiology.

[7]  A. Bauman,et al.  Physical activity and public health: updated recommendation for adults from the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association. , 2007, Circulation.

[8]  H. Gibbons,et al.  Multiple sources of positive- and negative-priming effects: An event-related potential study , 2006, Memory & cognition.

[9]  Donatella Spinelli,et al.  Effect of practice on brain activity: an investigation in top-level rifle shooters. , 2005, Medicine and science in sports and exercise.

[10]  E. Donchin.  Presidential address, 1980. Surprise!...Surprise? , 1981, Psychophysiology.

[11]  W. Neill,et al.  Persistence of negative priming: II. Evidence for episodic trace retrieval. , 1992, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[12]  S. Luck,et al.  Electrophysiological correlates of feature analysis during visual search. , 1994, Psychophysiology.

[13]  Charles H Hillman,et al.  A cross-sectional examination of age and physical activity on performance and event-related brain potentials in a task switching paradigm. , 2006, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[14]  C. Dolisi,et al.  P300, N400, aerobic fitness, and maximal aerobic exercise. , 2000, Psychophysiology.

[15]  Arthur F. Kramer,et al.  Assessing the development of automatic processing: An application of dual-task and event-related brain potential methodologies , 1988, Biological Psychology.

[16]  J. R. Simon.  The Effects of an Irrelevant Directional CUE on Human Information Processing , 1990 .

[17]  R. Emmerson,et al.  Age and fitness effects on EEG, ERPs, visual sensitivity, and cognition , 1990, Neurobiology of Aging.

[18]  Arthur F Kramer,et al.  Exercise, cognition, and the aging brain. , 2006, Journal of applied physiology.

[19]  B. Ainsworth,et al.  International physical activity questionnaire: 12-country reliability and validity. , 2003, Medicine and science in sports and exercise.

[20]  S. Tipper,et al.  Selection of moving and static objects for the control of spatially directed action. , 1990, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[21]  A. Kramer,et al.  Be smart, exercise your heart: exercise effects on brain and cognition , 2008, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[22]  F. N. Dempster,et al.  Interference and inhibition in cognition: An historical perspective , 1995 .

[23]  M. Coles.  Modern mind-brain reading: psychophysiology, physiology, and cognition. , 1989, Psychophysiology.

[24]  J. Polich.  Updating P300: An integrative theory of P3a and P3b , 2007, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[25]  Christopher I. Wright,et al.  Brain correlates of negative and positive visuospatial priming in adults , 2006, NeuroImage.

[26]  J. R. Simon,et al.  Auditory S-R compatibility: the effect of an irrelevant cue on information processing. , 1967, The Journal of applied psychology.

[27]  A. Treisman,et al.  Visual memory for novel shapes: implicit coding without attention. , 1996, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[28]  J. Polich,et al.  P300 and long-term physical exercise. , 1997, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[29]  A. Beck,et al.  An inventory for measuring depression. , 1961, Archives of general psychiatry.

[30]  C. Eriksen,et al.  Pre- and poststimulus activation of response channels: a psychophysiological analysis. , 1988, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[31]  M. Hagströmer,et al.  The International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ): a study of concurrent and construct validity , 2006, Public Health Nutrition.

[32]  Po-Wen Ku,et al.  Prevalence of leisure-time physical activity in Taiwanese adults: results of four national surveys, 2000-2004. , 2006, Preventive medicine.

[33]  H. Kornhuber,et al.  Hirnpotentialänderungen bei Willkürbewegungen und passiven Bewegungen des Menschen: Bereitschaftspotential und reafferente Potentiale , 1965, Pflüger's Archiv für die gesamte Physiologie des Menschen und der Tiere.

[34]  Camilla Anne Czubaj.  The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - Revised, Revisited , 1996 .

[35]  Charles H Hillman,et al.  The relationship of age and cardiovascular fitness to cognitive and motor processes. , 2002, Psychophysiology.

[36]  E. Donchin,et al.  Performance of concurrent tasks: a psychophysiological analysis of the reciprocity of information-processing resources. , 1983, Science.

[37]  William L. Wilkie,et al.  Presidential Address: 1980 , 1981 .

[38]  T. Endrass,et al.  Event-related brain potential variations during location and identity negative priming , 2006, Neuroscience Letters.

[39]  E. Fox.  Negative priming from ignored distractors in visual selection: A review , 1995, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[40]  C. Hillman,et al.  Cardiorespiratory fitness and acute aerobic exercise effects on neuroelectric and behavioral measures of action monitoring , 2006, Neuroscience.

[41]  S. Tipper.  The Negative Priming Effect: Inhibitory Priming by Ignored Objects , 1985, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology.

[42]  S. Tipper,et al.  A model of inhibitory mechanisms in selective attention. , 1994 .

[43]  T. Carr,et al.  Inhibitory Processes in Attention, Memory and Language , 1994 .

[44]  Andrew R. A. Conway,et al.  The effect of memory load on negative priming: An individual differences investigation , 1999, Memory & cognition.

[45]  Jeff Miller,et al.  Using the jackknife-based scoring method for measuring LRP onset effects in factorial designs. , 2001, Psychophysiology.

[46]  W. Neill,et al.  Persistence of negative priming: II. Evidence for episodic trace retrieval , 1992 .

[47]  A. Mori,et al.  Two types of movement-related cortical potentials preceding wrist extension in humans , 2001, Neuroreport.

[48]  F. Ferraro,et al.  The Relationship Between Cognitive Ability and Positive and Negative Priming in Identity and Spatial Priming Tasks , 2000, The Journal of general psychology.