Decreased Exercise-Induced Changes in Prefrontal Cortex Hemodynamics Are Associated With Depressive Symptoms

James Crum; Flaminia Ronca; George Herbert; Sabina Funk; Estela Carmona; Uzair Hakim; Isla Jones; Mark Hamer; Joy Hirsch; Antonia Hamilton; Ilias Tachtsidis; Paul W Burgess

doi:10.3389/fnrgo.2022.806485

Decreased Exercise-Induced Changes in Prefrontal Cortex Hemodynamics Are Associated With Depressive Symptoms

Front Neuroergon. 2022 May 20:3:806485. doi: 10.3389/fnrgo.2022.806485. eCollection 2022.

Authors

James Crum¹, Flaminia Ronca², George Herbert¹, Sabina Funk¹, Estela Carmona², Uzair Hakim³, Isla Jones¹, Mark Hamer², Joy Hirsch^{3

4

5

6}, Antonia Hamilton¹, Ilias Tachtsidis³, Paul W Burgess¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Brain Sciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
² Institute of Sport Exercise and Health, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
³ Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering Sciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
⁴ Department of Comparative Medicine, School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT, United States.
⁵ Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT, United States.
⁶ Department of Neuroscience, School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT, United States.

Abstract

People with a depressed mood tend to perform poorly on executive function tasks, which require much of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), an area of the brain which has also been shown to be hypo-active in this population. Recent research has suggested that these aspects of cognition might be improved through physical activity and cognitive training. However, whether the acute effects of exercise on PFC activation during executive function tasks vary with depressive symptoms remains unclear. To investigate these effects, 106 participants were given a cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET) and were administered a set of executive function tests directly before and after the CPET assessment. The composite effects of exercise on the PFC (all experimental blocks) showed bilateral activation changes in dorsolateral (BA46/9) and ventrolateral (BA44/45) PFC, with the greatest changes occurring in rostral PFC (BA10). The effects observed in right ventrolateral PFC varied depending on level of depressive symptoms (13% variance explained); the changes in activation were less for higher levels. There was also a positive relationship between CPET scores (VO₂peak) and right rostral PFC, in that greater activation changes in right BA10 were predictive of higher levels of aerobic fitness (9% variance explained). Since acute exercise ipsilaterally affected this PFC subregion and the inferior frontal gyrus during executive function tasks, this suggests physical activity might benefit the executive functions these subregions support. And because physical fitness and depressive symptoms explained some degree of cerebral upregulation to these subregions, physical activity might more specifically facilitate the engagement of executive functions that are typically associated with hypoactivation in depressed populations. Future research might investigate this possibility in clinical populations, particularly the neural effects of physical activity used in combination with mental health interventions.

Keywords: aerobic fitness (VO2max); depression; executive functions; exercise neuroscience; fNIRS (functional near infrared spectroscopy); frontal lobe.