gms | German Medical Science

Objective: Regular long term physical activity (PA) promotes health and effective cognitive functioning. Electrophysiological and psychological indices of learning process were assessed in healthy young subjects concerning their level of physical activity.

Material/Methods: A number of 90 participants were divided into three groups, (each group consisted of 30 subjects, mean age 21.2 years): sedentary group (low level of PA), recreational group (moderate level of PA) and athletes group (high level of PA). We used Ray Auditory Verbal Learning Test to evaluate the ability to learn verbal information and EXG – electroexpectogram’s paradigm to evaluate ability to adapt to cognitive demanding of experimental environment. We compared the learning curves obtained from EXG and RAVLT testing, between investigated groups.

Results: The physically active subjects (both groups) were significantly better then sedentary subjects in forming the multi-oscillatory EXG curves which is an indicator of successful cognitive adaptation during this cognitive electrophysiological paradigm. Results from RAVL testing showed that average value of the sum of the properly recalled items in sedentary individuals was 52.43±5.67; in group with moderate level of PA average total score was 57.5±5.42; in the athletes it was 59.63±5.12. The results gained in our study have shown that subjects who are involved in a long-term regular exercise display more successful learning curves during applied cognitive examinations.

Conclusion: Young adult subjects with higher level of physical activity had better cognitive performance during psychological and neurophysiologic assessment of learning process. Our outcome supports the hypothesis that physical activity has a positive impact on cognitive functions.