Positive Mood while Exercising Influences Beneficial Effects of Exercise with Music on Prefrontal Executive Function: A Functional NIRS Study

Much attention has been focused on physical exercise benefits to mental health such as mood and cognitive function. Our recent studies have consistently shown that a single bout of elicits increased task-related brain activation mainly in the dorsolateral part prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which results improved executive performance. As DLPFC is associated with modulation well function, it tempting hypothesize exercising while positive would facilitate beneficial effects function via activation. Thus, we conceived an experiment used music elicit during exercise. Thirty-three young adults performed ten minutes moderate-intensity (50% V.O2peak) pedaling two experimental conditions: listening beeps at steady tempo. Mood were respectively assessed using Two-Dimensional Scale color-word-matching Stroop task before after sessions. Prefrontal was monitored functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Exercise elicited greater enhancement (vitality) than did beeps. Contrary our hypothesis, there no significant differences between conditions improvement performance cortical left-DLPFC. The correlation analyses, however, revealed correlations among vitality, shortened interference time These support hypothesis influences benefit