Neural Noise- Acute aerobic exercise can transiently affect cognitive control; how exercise intensity and recovery timing affect response inhibition and its neural correlates is not fully understood.1
- An EEG study tested how exercise intensity modulates response inhibition, behavior, and event-related potentials (ERPs) across pre-exercise, during exercise, and two recovery phases.1 1
Weekly enrichment (2026-07-20)
- Thirty-three healthy young adults were recruited; 12 were excluded (poor stop-signal performance, cycling movement/EMG artifacts, or technical issues), leaving a final sample of 21 (6 females, 15 males; mean age 19.7, SD 3.6) who self-selected into low (n=6, achieved 32.2% heart-rate reserve), moderate (n=8, 47.1% HRR), and high (n=7, 65.4% HRR) intensity groups.2
- EEG was recorded with a 32-channel ANT Neuro eego sports system (10–20 layout, CPz reference, 1000 Hz) during a stop-signal task with 30% stop trials and an adaptive stop-signal delay (±50 ms tracking); SSRT was estimated with the integration method across four phases (pre-exercise control, during exercise, recovery_1, recovery_2).2
- Go reaction time was significantly shorter during exercise than control (F(3,54)=10.53, p<0.001), with the high-intensity group showing the largest in-exercise reduction (347.8 ms during exercise vs 453.5 ms at recovery_2).2
- Stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) was significantly shorter during exercise than control (main effect F(3,54)=3.47, p=0.022; post-hoc p=0.011), indicating faster inhibitory stopping while exercising.2
- The go-trial N2 amplitude at Cz was reduced during exercise versus control (F(3,54)=10.01, p<0.001; sign-flip permutation p<0.0002), whereas stop-trial N2 showed no exercise effect.2
- Unsuccessful-stop P3 amplitude was larger in recovery_1 than control (F(3,54)=3.93, p=0.013; permutation p=0.0014), while P2 showed no reliable exercise modulation across trial types.2
- Behavioral gains were transient and did not carry into recovery; effect sizes were medium (partial η² ≈ 0.05–0.08), and the authors caution that the small, sex-imbalanced, self-selected sample limits inferences about intensity-dependent effects.2
- For context, an earlier stop-signal ERP study (Chu et al., 2015; 30-min moderate cycling, n=21) reported shortened SSRT with increased stop-P3, consistent with acute exercise selectively affecting later inhibitory-control processing stages.3