Associations between aerobic exercise and dopamine-related reward-processing: Informing a model of human exercise engagement

Impact of spa therapy on physical activity, sleep and heart rate variability among individuals with fibromyalgia: Results of an ancillary study

Spa therapy is recommended to manage symptoms of fibromyalgia, but the physiological mechanisms underlying this improvement have been poorly studied. In an original study, we explored the effect of a 3-week rheumatology spa treatment for fibromyalgia patients on quality of life and with a symptom severity questionnaire. We present here the results of an ancillary study which explored three secondary criteria using objective measurement methods: diurnal actimetry for physical activity analysis, nocturnal actimetry for sleep analysis and heart rate variability. Eighty-three fibromyalgia patients were randomized to participate in an immediate 3-week rheumatological spa therapy, either a start within 6 weeks after inclusion (interventional group, n = 39) or a delayed, start 6 months after inclusion (control group, n = 44). Patients were asked to wear an actimeter (n = 56) to assess diurnal physical activity and sleep quality and a 24-h Holter ECG (n = 60) to assess nocturnal heart rate variability at baseline, 3 months and 6 months after inclusion. Time spent in sedentary and light physical activity was reduced to ∼30 min at 6 months in the interventional group (P = 0.027). Sleep quality and heart rate variability were not improved. Spa therapy made it possible to reduce sedentary activities in patients' daily life for up to 6 months afterwards, concomitant with the improvement in quality of life, pain and fatigue as highlighted in the original Thermalgi study.

Influence of physical exercise on negative emotions in college students: chain mediating role of sleep quality and self-rated health

Background

Negative emotions in college students are a significant factor affecting mental health, with suicide behaviors caused by negative emotions showing an annual increasing trend. Existing studies suggest that physical exercise is essential to alleviate negative feelings, yet the intrinsic mechanisms by which it affects negative emotions have not been fully revealed.

Objective

Negative emotions in college students represent a significant issue affecting mental health. This study investigates the relationship between physical exercise and negative emotions among college students, incorporating sleep quality and self-rated health (SRH) as mediators to analyze the pathway mechanism of how physical exercise affects students' negative emotions.

Methods

A cross-sectional study design was utilized, employing online questionnaires for investigation. The scales included the Physical Activity Rating Scale-3 (PARS-3), the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 (DASS-21), the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and the 12-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-12), resulting in the collection of 30,475 valid questionnaires, with a validity rate of 91%. Chain mediation tests and Bootstrap methods were applied for effect analysis.

Results

The proportions of university students engaged in low, medium, and high levels of physical exercise were 77.6, 13.1, and 9.3%, respectively. The proportions of students experiencing "very severe" levels of stress, anxiety, and depression were 4.5, 10.9, and 3.6%, respectively. Physical exercise was significantly positively correlated with self-rated health (r = 0.194, p < 0.01), significantly negatively correlated with sleep quality (r = -0.035, p < 0.01), and significantly negatively correlated with stress, anxiety, and depression (r = -0.03, p < 0.01; r = -0.058, p < 0.01; r = -0.055, p < 0.01). Sleep quality was significantly negatively correlated with self-rated health (r = -0.242, p < 0.01). Mediation effect testing indicated that sleep quality and self-rated health partially mediated the relationship between physical exercise and negative emotions, with total effect, total direct effect, and total indirect effect values of -1.702, -0.426, and - 1.277, respectively.

Conclusion

College students primarily engage in low-intensity physical activity. Sleep quality and self-rated health mediate the impact of physical exercise on students' negative emotions. A certain level of physical activity can directly affect students' emotional states and indirectly influence their negative emotions via sleep and self-rated health. Regular engagement in physical activities primarily positively impacts emotional states by enhancing mood stability and overall emotional resilience.

From brain to body: exploring the connection between altered reward processing and physical fitness in schizophrenia

Understanding the underlying mechanisms that link psychopathology and physical comorbidities in schizophrenia is crucial since decreased physical fitness and overweight pose major risk factors for cardio-vascular diseases and decrease the patients' life expectancies. We hypothesize that altered reward anticipation plays an important role in this. We implemented the Monetary Incentive Delay task in a MR scanner and a fitness test battery to compare schizophrenia patients (SZ, n = 43) with sex- and age-matched healthy controls (HC, n = 36) as to reward processing and their physical fitness. We found differences in reward anticipation between SZs and HCs, whereby increased activity in HCs positively correlated with overall physical condition and negatively correlated with psychopathology. On the other handy, SZs revealed stronger activity in the posterior cingulate cortex and in cerebellar regions during reward anticipation, which could be linked to decreased overall physical fitness. These findings demonstrate that a dysregulated reward system is not only responsible for the symptomatology of schizophrenia, but might also be involved in physical comorbidities which could pave the way for future lifestyle therapy interventions.

Acute aerobic exercise at different intensities modulates inhibitory control and cortical excitability in adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

BACKGROUND

This study aimed to investigate the effects of different aerobic exercise intensities on inhibitory control and cortical excitability in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

METHODS

The study was conducted in a within-subject design. Twenty-four adults with ADHD completed a stop signal task and received cortical excitability assessment by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) before and after a single session of low-, moderate-, high-intensity aerobic exercise or a control intervention.

RESULTS

Acute moderate-, and high-intensity aerobic exercise improved inhibitory control in adults with ADHD. Moreover, the improving effect was similar between moderate-, and high-intensity aerobic exercise conditions. As shown by the brain physiology results, short interval intracortical inhibition was significantly increased following both, moderate- and high-intensity aerobic exercise intervention conditions. Additionally, the alteration of short interval intracortical inhibition and inhibitory control improvement were positively correlated.

CONCLUSIONS

The moderate-, and high-intensity aerobic exercise-dependent alterations of cortical excitability in adults with ADHD might partially explain the inhibitory control-improving effects of aerobic exercise in this population.

Cardiometabolic and immune response to exercise training in patients with metabolic syndrome: retrospective analysis of two randomized clinical trials

Background

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is defined by the presence of central obesity plus ≥two metabolic/cardiovascular risk factors (RF), with inflammation being a major disease-driving mechanism. Structured endurance exercise training (ET) may positively affect these traits, as well as cardiorespiratory fitness (V̇O2peak).

Aims

We explore individual ET-mediated improvements of MetS-associated RF in relation to improvements in V̇O2peak and inflammatory profile.

Methods

MetS patients from two randomized controlled trials, ExMET (n = 24) and OptimEx (n = 34), had performed 4- or 3-months supervised ET programs according to the respective trial protocol. V̇O2peak, MetS-defining RFs (both RCTs), broad blood leukocyte profile, cytokines and plasma proteins (ExMET only) were assessed at baseline and follow-up. Intra-individual changes in RFs were analysed for both trials separately using non-parametric approaches. Associations between changes in each RF over the exercise period (n-fold of baseline values) were correlated using a non-parametrical approach (Spearman). RF clustering was explored by uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP) and changes in RF depending on other RF or exercise parameters were explored by recursive partitioning.

Results

Four months of ET reduced circulating leukocyte counts (63.5% of baseline, P = 8.0e-6), especially effector subtypes. ET response of MetS-associated RFs differed depending on patients' individual RF constellation, but was not associated with individual change in V̇O2peak. Blood pressure lowering depended on cumulative exercise duration (ExMET: ≥102 min per week; OptimEx-MetS: ≥38 min per session) and baseline triglyceride levels (ExMET: <150 mg/dl; OptimEx-MetS: <174.8 mg/dl). Neuropilin-1 plasma levels were inversely associated with fasting plasma triglycerides (R: -0.4, P = 0.004) and changes of both parameters during the ET phase were inversely correlated (R: -0.7, P = 0.0001).

Conclusions

ET significantly lowered effector leukocyte blood counts. The improvement of MetS-associated cardiovascular RFs depended on individual basal RF profile and exercise duration but was not associated with exercise-mediated increase in V̇O2peak. Neuropilin-1 may be linked to exercise-mediated triglyceride lowering.

Fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations associated with μ-opioid and dopamine receptor distributions in the central nervous system after high-intensity exercise bouts

Introduction

Dopaminergic, opiod and endocannabinoid neurotransmission are thought to play an important role in the neurobiology of acute exercise and, in particular, in mediating positive affective responses and reward processes. Recent evidence indicates that changes in fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (zfALFF) in resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) may reflect changes in specific neurotransmitter systems as tested by means of spatial correlation analyses.

Methods

Here, we investigated this relationship at different exercise intensities in twenty young healthy trained athletes performing low-intensity (LIIE), high-intensity (HIIE) interval exercises, and a control condition on three separate days. Positive And Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) scores and rs-fMRI were acquired before and after each of the three experimental conditions. Respective zfALFF changes were analyzed using repeated measures ANOVAs. We examined the spatial correspondence of changes in zfALFF before and after training with the available neurotransmitter maps across all voxels and additionally, hypothesis-driven, for neurotransmitter maps implicated in the neurobiology of exercise (dopaminergic, opiodic and endocannabinoid) in specific brain networks associated with "reward" and "emotion."

Results

Elevated PANAS Positive Affect was observed after LIIE and HIIE but not after the control condition. HIIE compared to the control condition resulted in differential zfALFF decreases in precuneus, temporo-occipital, midcingulate and frontal regions, thalamus, and cerebellum, whereas differential zfALFF increases were identified in hypothalamus, pituitary, and periaqueductal gray. The spatial alteration patterns in zfALFF during HIIE were positively associated with dopaminergic and μ-opioidergic receptor distributions within the 'reward' network.

Discussion

These findings provide new insight into the neurobiology of exercise supporting the importance of reward-related neurotransmission at least during high-intensity physical activity.

The Impact of Aromatherapy Gelatin Cold Compresses on the Concentration Level of Students in the Covid-19 Pandemic Online Class

Introduction

Stressful circumstances presented by the Covid-19 pandemic led to reduced levels of study concentration among students, and these conditions had been linked with dopamine levels.

Objectives

This study aimed to evaluate the impact of aromatherapy gelatin cold compress in increasing the study concentration of students by decreasing stress levels and elevating dopamine levels during the Covid-19 pandemic online class.

Methods

The study participants consisted of 42 students, who were selected using the simple random sampling method. Subsequently, the participants were comparably divided into control and treatment groups. Compress intervention was given to the treatment group on the forehead for 10 min before studying online. The Visual Analog Scale (VAS) and Stroop test were then used to determine stress and concentration levels of the students, respectively. The catecholamine fractionated urine was used to measure dopamine levels. Analysis was carried out using Paired T-test and Independent T-test with α = 0.05 and CI = 95%.

Results

The mean value of the VAS before and after treatment was 5.81 ± 2.48 and 5.28 ± 2.61 in the control (p = 0.205), as well as 6.28 ± 1.62 and 4.38 ± 1.89 in the treatment group (p = 0.000). The mean interference score of the Stroop test before and after treatment was 13.16 ± 1.05 and 13.22 ± 1.31 among the controls (p = 0.947), while 13.35 ± 6.94 and 8.92 ± 5.91 were recorded in the treatment group (p = 0.000). The average dopamine levels before and after the intervention were 145.50 ± 7.94 mg/mL and 146.65 ± 8.23 mg/mL creatinine among the controls (p = 0.542), while 145.35 ± 1.03 mg/mL and 265.18 ± 1.27 mg/mL creatinine were obtained in the treatment group (p = 0.01). Furthermore, the results showed that the creatinine levels were within the normal ranges. The Independent T-test of stress, concentration, and dopamine levels obtained p = 0.024, p = 0.010, and p = 0.090, respectively.

Conclusion

Aromatherapy gelatin cold compress was effective in increasing study concentration by decreasing stress levels and increasing dopamine levels during the Covid-19 pandemic online class.

Regional cortical perfusion increases induced by a 6-month endurance training in young sedentary adults

Physical inactivity is documented as a health risk factor for chronic diseases, accelerated aging, and cognitive impairment. Physical exercise, on the other hand, plays an important role in healthy aging by promoting positive muscular, cardiovascular, and central nervous system adaptions. Prior studies on the effects of exercise training on cerebral perfusion have focused largely on elderly cohorts or patient cohorts, while perfusion effects of exercise training in young sedentary adults have not yet been fully assessed. Therefore, the present study examined the physiological consequence of a 6-month endurance exercise training on brain perfusion in 28 young sedentary adults randomly assigned to an intervention group (IG; regular physical exercise) or a control group (CG; without physical exercise). The IG performed an extensive running interval training three times per week over 6 months. Performance diagnostics and MRI were performed every 2 months, and training intensity was adapted individually. Brain perfusion measurements with pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling were analyzed using the standard Oxford ASL pipeline. A significant interaction effect between group and time was found for right superior temporal gyrus (STG) perfusion, driven by an increase in the IG and a decrease in the CG. Furthermore, a significant time effect was observed in the right middle occipital region in the IG only. Perfusion increases in the right STG, in the ventral striatum, and in primary motor areas were significantly associated with increases in maximum oxygen uptake (VO_2max). Overall, this study identified region-specific increases in local perfusion in a cohort of young adults that partly correlated with individual performance increases, hence, suggesting exercise dose dependency. Respective adaptations in brain perfusion are discussed in the context of physical exercise-induced vascular plasticity.