Effects of acute aerobic exercise on resting state functional connectivity of motor cortex in college students.

This study intends to inspect the effects of acute aerobic exercise (AE) on resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) in motor cortex of college students and the moderating effect of fitness level. METHODS: 20 high fitness level college students and 20 ordinary college students were recruited in public. Subjects completed 25 min of moderate- and high-intensity acute aerobic exercise respectively by a bicycle ergometer, and the motor cortex's blood oxygen signals in resting state were monitored by functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS, the Shimadzu portable Light NIRS, Japan) in pre- and post-test. RESULTS: At the moderate intensity level, the total mean value of RSFC pre- and post-test was significantly different in the high fitness level group (pre-test 0.62 ± 0.18, post-test 0.51 ± 0.17, t(19) = 2.61, p = 0.02, d = 0.58), but no significant change was found in the low fitness level group. At the high-intensity level, there was no significant difference in the difference of total RSFC between pre- and post-test in the high and low fitness group. According to and change trend of 190 "edges": at the moderate-intensity level, the number of difference edges in the high fitness group (d = 0.58, 23) were significantly higher than those in the low fitness group (d = 0.32, 15), while at high-intensity level, there was a reverse trend between the high fitness group (d = 0.25, 18) and the low fitness group (d = 0.39, 23). CONCLUSIONS: moderate-intensity AE can cause significant changes of RSFC in the motor cortex of college students with high fitness, while high fitness has a moderating effect on the relationship between exercise intensity and RSFC. RSFC of people with high fitness is more likely to be affected by AE and show a wider range of changes.

Characteristics of resting state functional connectivity of motor cortex of high fitness level college students: Experimental evidence from functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).

OBJECTIVE: This study inspects difference of resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) of motor cortex between athletes and ordinary college students and the test-retest reliability of RSFC. METHODS: Twenty high fitness level college students (high fitness group) and 20 ordinary college students (control group) were recruited. The motor cortical blood oxygen signals in resting states were monitored by functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). RSFCs of brain signals were preprocessed and calculated by FC-NIRS software. RSFC results of test-retest reliability were evaluated by intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC). RESULTS: Total RSFC (HbO signal) was significantly different between high fitness group (0.62 ± 0.04) and low fitness group (0.81 ± 0.04) (p < .05). Significant differences were found between the groups (HbO signal) in 50 edges among the 190 edges of motor cortex (14 edges after FDR corrected). At three hemoglobin concentrations, mean of group-level ICC (C, 1) for total RSFC in two groups was 0.40 ± 0.10, whereas the mean of group-level ICC (C, k) was 0.57 ± 0.11, depicting "fair" reliability. The mean of group-level ICC (C, 1) of 190 "edges" was 0.88 ± 0.06, whereas mean of ICC (C, k) was 0.94 ± 0.03, exhibiting "excellent" reliability. CONCLUSION: Fitness level is the factor causing specific changes in RSFC strength of motor cortex that can be utilized as biomarker for evaluating the fitness level.