Why the study?
It was hypothesized that a decrease in oxygen saturation during exercise under hypoxic conditions causes reductions in executive performance and prefrontal neural activity.
Does maintaining resting SpO2 levels during moderate-intensity exercise under hypoxia prevent cognitive fatigue and prefrontal deactivation in healthy young adults?
Does maintaining resting SpO2 levels during moderate-intensity exercise under hypoxia prevent cognitive fatigue and prefrontal deactivation in healthy young adults?
Maintaining resting oxygen saturation during moderate-intensity exercise in a hypoxic environment prevents the decline in executive function and prefrontal cortex activity typically caused by hypoxic exercise.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
May impair executive function and l-DLPFC oxygenation after hypoxic versus moderate exercise; hypothesis-generating for SpO2 maintenance during hypoxic activity.
We found that a 10-minute bout of moderate-intensity exercise (50% maximal oxygen uptake) under normobaric and hypoxic conditions (fraction of inspired oxygen [FIO 2 ] = 0.135) reduced executive performance measured by the color-word Stroop task (CWST) and neural activity in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which is responsible for executive functions, using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. One of the potential physiological reasons for this would be the decrease in oxygen saturation (SpO 2 ) that occurs during exercise under hypoxic environments. To test this hypothesis, we compared executive performance and related prefrontal activation between two experimental conditions, in which the participants inhaled normobaric hypoxic gas (FIO 2 = 0.135) (hypoxic exercise [HE]) or milder hypoxic gas (FIO 2 = 0.161 ± 1.8), which was adjusted so that SpO 2 during exercise remained at the resting level (ME). As a result, the HE-induced reduction in left DLPFC activity and CWST performance was suppressed in the ME condition. These results suggest that cognitive fatigue caused by exercise in a hypoxic environment may be related to the decrease in SpO 2 during exercise, which may lead to the development of a method to cope with cognitive fatigue due to exercise that causes hypoxemia during exercise, e.g., mountain climbing or strenuous exercise.
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Ochi et al. (2022) studied this question.
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