Brain on Pause: How Sedentary Behavior Impacts Inhibitory Control Across Life

Inhibitory control, an important marker of daily-life autonomy, is impaired with age. However, the role of the level of physical activity (PA) and sedentary behavior (SB) in the lifelong decline of such cognitive-motor function remains to be elucidated. In the current study, we probed the association between inhibitory control and three predictors: age, PA and SB, by means of multiple regressions. Seventy-eight individuals, aged 18-88 years old, performed the Go-NoGo and Stop-Signal tasks to estimate motor impulse control and reactive inhibition, respectively. We measured the level of SB and PA during 4 consecutive days using accelerometers. Our main finding is that SB, but not PA, predicted reactive inhibition, similarly to age. In other words, a very old person with low SB would be more likely to stop an action than a younger person with higher SB. Our data suggest that achieving the recommended level of PA may not mitigate the association between low inhibitory function and high SB.