The Benefit of an Acute Bout of Exercise for Procedural Consolidation Is Not Related to Avoiding a Temporary Reduction in Motor Cortical Excitability
Abstract
Individuals in two separate experiments implicitly acquired a procedural skill which was
tested after a 6-hr, wake-filled interval. In both experiments individuals that were exposed to a
vowel counting activity immediately following procedural training exhibited successful
procedural consolidation manifest as significant offline gain. This gain was eliminated by
replacing the vowel counting task with a declarative learning task. The disruption in procedural
consolidation demonstrated in both experiments confirms reports that declarative and procedural
systems can interact during wakefulness. A novel finding revealed in Experiment 1, and replicated
in Experiment 2, was that exposure to a brief bout of moderate intensity cardiovascular exercise
immediately after procedural learning protected the newly acquired motor memory from
interference introduced by declarative learning. These data suggest that the interplay between
declarative and procedural systems can be modified by exercise. Experiment 2 examined the
possibility that the exercise bout in Experiment 1 served to elevate cortical excitability at M1,
eliminating the transient reduction that is displayed shortly after training in cases where procedural
consolidation does not occur. Findings from Experiment 2 indicated that exercise does instigate
an increase in M1 excitability during the immediate time period after practice. However, the
increase in M1 excitability induced via exercise was not significantly greater than the increase that
occurred for other learning conditions in the absence of exercise. Thus, the benefit of incorporating
an acute bout of exercise for procedural learning is not dependent on the upregulation of
excitability of a key neural site for procedural skill consolidation, M1.
Citation
Chen, Jing (2018). The Benefit of an Acute Bout of Exercise for Procedural Consolidation Is Not Related to Avoiding a Temporary Reduction in Motor Cortical Excitability. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A & M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /173947.