Effects of acute exercise on emotional memory.

Research has demonstrated beneficial effects of acute exercise on memory for neutral materials, such as word lists of neutral valence/low arousal. However, the impacts of exercise on emotional memory is less understood. Across three laboratory experiments in college students, we tested if acute exercise could enhance both neutral and emotional memory performance, anticipating a greater effect for emotional memory. We examined effects of exercise at varying intensities (Experiment 1: high-intensity; Experiment 2: low- and high-intensity; Experiment 3: moderate-intensity), of diverse modalities (Experiment 1: treadmill jogging; Experiment 2: cycling; Experiment 3: open-skill (racquetball) and closed-skill (treadmill jogging) exercise), and on emotional memory performance assessed at increasing levels of hippocampal dependency (Experiment 1: Y/N recognition task; Experiment 2: paired-associative recognition task; Experiment 3: cued-recall task). We found that, in all experiments, acute exercise did not significantly influence emotional or neutral memory performance relative to sedentary control conditions. However, we observed several noteworthy outcomes indicating that acute exercise may be linked to improvements in memory confidence and accuracy for central aspects of emotional memory stimuli, and that select exercise modalities (e.g. treadmill exercise) may also be associated with increased frequency of memory intrusions.

Effects of Exercise on Explicit Memory Function: Incidental and Intentional Encoding May Depend on Exercise Timing.

The present experiment evaluated the effects of self-reported exercise behavior and an acute bout of high-intensity exercise on explicit memory function. The memory tasks were encoded either incidentally or intentionally; for intentional encoding, participants were told to focus on memorizing the stimuli (words), whereas for incidental encoding, participants were unaware that they would be subsequently asked to complete an object recognition task. Among a sample of 150 adults (Mage = 20 years), randomly assigned experimental participants engaged in the following task sequence: (a) incidentally encoded a series of objects, (b) engaged in 20 minutes of high-intensity exercise, (c) intentionally encoded a word list, and (d) completed explicit memory retrieval tasks. Control group participants viewed a time matched video in lieu of high intensity exercise. We measured self-reported exercise behavior via an exercise questionnaire. We did not observe convincing evidence of an effect of high-intensity acute exercise, when occurring during the early consolidation period, on memory function, for either incidental or intentional encoding tasks. However, self-reported engagement in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity was favorably associated with explicit memory performance.

Exercise and Cognitive Function.

Cognitive function is associated with longevity and is of critical importance for optimal daily functioning[...].

Acute Exercise on Memory Reconsolidation.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Once a memory is reactivated, it enters a labile state and, thus, is vulnerable to memory decay and/or distortion. Recent research demonstrates that acute, high-intensity exercise is associated with enhanced episodic memory function. Very limited research, however, has evaluated whether acute exercise can attenuate memory distortion from memory reactivation, which was the purpose of this study. METHODS: A between-subject randomized controlled intervention was employed. Participants (N = 80) were randomly assigned to one of four groups, including (1) reminder with exercise, (2) reminder, (3) no reminder, and (4) interference control. For the groups, participants completed three visits (Visit 1, 2, and 3), which all occurred 48 hours apart. An exception to this was the interference control group, which did not complete Visit 2. On Visit 2, the reminder with exercise group engaged in a 15 min bout of high-intensity exercise (80% of heart rate reserve) immediately after memory reactivation. On Visit 3, participants engaged in a free recall (4 trials) of the memory task encoded on Visit 1. RESULTS: In a 4 (groups) × 4 (learning trials) mixed-measures ANOVA, with the group as the between-subjects variable and the learning trials (1-4) as the within-subject variable, there was a significant main effect group, F(3, 76) = 4.18, p = 0.008, η2p = 0.14, and a significant main effect for the learning trials, F(2.40, 182.59) = 49.25, p < 0.001, η2p = 0.39, but there was no group by learning trials interaction, F(7.20, 182.59) = 1.07, p = 0.38, η2p = 0.04. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that exercise may, potentially, attenuate memory distortion from memory reactivation. However, future work is needed to confirm these findings before any strong conclusions can be reached.