I The Effect of Different Types of Exercises on Cognition

Abstract

Background: Physical activity (PA) has been association with improvement of cognitive function (CF) but the evidences are contradictory. Furthermore, there is a lack of comparative experimental studies that compare different types of exercises effect on cognition. Objective: to examine the effect of exercises on CF; and to examine whether different types of exercises cause different effects on CF. Methods: 153 participants (males N= 72, females N= 81) were randomly selected and assigned to control n=31, running n=35, and strength groups n=86. Participants were instructed to exercise at moderate-high intensity 3 times per week for 8 weeks. Baseline and post-intervention measurements of four different cognitive domains were taken and compared against each other. Results: 126 participants completed the programme. Data was analysed using IBM SPSS statistics programme, version 27. Two-way Mixed ANOVA test was used to analyse the data. Our analysis showed that there was an interaction between intervention and RT in 3 cognitive measures (p < 0.001). Strength group showed greater improvement (p <0.001) in CRT RT, compared to running group (p = 0.004). However, SRT RT, CRT accuracy, APS accuracy, and XNA accuracy results did not change significantly (p > 0.05). Conclusion: CF improved with both exercise interventions. Strength exercises demonstrated superior improvement in one of cognitive tasks compared to running exercise. We conclude that both aerobic and strength exercises have positive effects on CF, but strength type of exercises may have a better effect. However, further studies should be conducted to furtherly examine these effects.