Key result
Maximal exertion during an incremental cycling task significantly increased prefrontal and motor activations, with greater prefrontal activation in the low-load compared to the high-load condition.
Why the study?
Does exercise fatigue induced by maximal exertion affect prefrontal and motor activations measured by NIRS?
Does exercise fatigue induced by maximal exertion affect prefrontal and motor activations measured by NIRS?
Near-infrared spectroscopy demonstrates that prefrontal and motor cortex activations increase near maximal exertion, highlighting the prefrontal cortex's role in exercise fatigue.
Fatigue from maximal exercise may alter cortical activation; leaves open NIRS utility for clinical exercise monitoring.
This study aimed to examine the effects of active task-related fatigue induced by maximal exercise on human cognitive and motor systems. To achieve the goal, we measured participants' activation changes in their prefrontal and motor cortices while performing an incremental cycling task using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). The participant's task was to ride a test bike to maximal exertion twice within 2 days in a low-load and a high-load condition, respectively. The behavioral data showed longer cycling time in the low-load condition than that in the high-load condition. By contrast, the NIRS data showed greater prefrontal activations in the low-load condition than that in the high-load condition. More importantly, both the prefrontal and motor activations increased significantly near maximal exertion and then decreased in the initial recovery period, and the activation changes in the left prefrontal cortex resulted in changes in the bilateral motor areas. The results directly indicate the critical role of prefrontal cortex in fatigue and suggest that NIRS is an appropriate brain-imaging tool to monitor fatigue in natural environments.
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Wu et al. (2017) studied this question. Incremental cycling task to maximal exertion vs. Low-load vs high-load condition was evaluated on Activation changes in prefrontal and motor cortices measured by NIRS. Maximal exertion during an incremental cycling task significantly increased prefrontal and motor activations, with greater prefrontal activation in the low-load compared to the high-load condition.
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