Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Behav. Neurosci.
Sec. Learning and Memory
Volume 18 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2024.1515682

Acute Aerobic Exercise Enhances Associative Learning in Regular Exercisers but not in Non-Regular Exercisers

Provisionally accepted
Kayleigh Gultig Kayleigh Gultig 1*Cornelis P Boele Cornelis P Boele 1,2Lotte E M Roggeveen Lotte E M Roggeveen 3Emily Soong Emily Soong 1S K E Koekkoek S K E Koekkoek 1Chris I De Zeeuw Chris I De Zeeuw 1,4Henk-Jan Boele Henk-Jan Boele 1,2,5*
  • 1 Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands
  • 2 BlinkLab Ltd, Sydney, Australia
  • 3 VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Netherlands
  • 4 Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (KNAW), Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • 5 Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Physical exercise has repeatedly been reported to have advantageous effects on brain functions, including learning and memory formation. However, objective tools to measure such effects are often lacking. Eyeblink conditioning is a well-characterised method for studying the neural basis of associative learning. As such, this paradigm has potential as a tool to assess to what extent exercise affects one of the most basic forms of learning. Until recently, however, using this paradigm for testing human subjects in their daily life was technically challenging. As a consequence, no studies have investigated how exercise affects eyeblink conditioning in humans. Here we hypothesize that acute aerobic exercise is associated with improved performance in eyeblink conditioning. Furthermore, we explored whether the effects of exercise differed for people engaging in regular exercise versus those who were not. We conducted a case-control study using a smartphone-based platform for conducting neurometric eyeblink conditioning in healthy adults aged between 18 -40 years (n = 36). Groups were matched on age, sex, and education level. Our primary outcome measures included the amplitude and timing of conditioned eyelid responses over the course of eyeblink training. As a secondary measure, we studied the amplitude of the unconditioned responses.Acute exercise significantly enhanced the acquisition of conditioned eyelid responses; however, this effect was only true for regularly exercising individuals. No statistically significant effects were established for timing of the conditioned responses and amplitude of the unconditioned responses.This study highlights a facilitative role of acute aerobic exercise in associative learning and emphasises the importance of accounting for long-term exercise habits when investigating the acute effects of exercise on brain functioning.

    Keywords: aerobic exercise, Acute Exercise, Learning, lifestyle, Neurophysiology, eyeblink conditioning

    Received: 23 Oct 2024; Accepted: 18 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Gultig, Boele, Roggeveen, Soong, Koekkoek, De Zeeuw and Boele. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Kayleigh Gultig, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands
    Henk-Jan Boele, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.