Enhancing Children's Motor Memory Retention Through Acute Intense Exercise: Effects of Different Exercise Durations

Abstract

Physical exercise has been proposed as a viable means to stimulate motor learning. Exercise characteristics, including intensity and duration, may play a role in modulating the exercise effect on motor learning. While some evidence exists regarding the benefits of intense and relatively long exercise, little is known about the effect of short exercise bouts on motor learning, especially in children. This study aimed to assess the effect of long versus short intense exercise bouts on the adaptation and consolidation of a rotational visuomotor adaptation task. The participants were 71 healthy children from two sites divided into three groups: long exercise bout (LONG), short exercise bout (SHORT), and no exercise (CON). Children performed a rotated (clockwise 60° rotation) motor task on four different occasions: an adaptation set and 1 h, 24 h, and 7 days delayed retention sets. Exercise bouts were performed prior to the adaptation set. Results showed a group effect during motor adaptation [F(2,68) = 3.160; p = 0.049; η p 2 = 0.087], but no statistical differences were found between groups. Regarding retention tests, both exercise groups (LONG and SHORT) showed superior retention compared to CON group [F(2,68) = 7.102; p = 0.002; η p 2 = 0.175]. No differences were found between exercise groups, indicating similar benefits for the two exercise interventions. Overall, whether the exercise duration was long or short, exercise improved motor memory retention as an estimate of memory consolidation process. The use of short exercise bouts may be suitable to improve children's motor memory consolidation in environments where time constraints exist.

Keywords: children; exercise duration; initial directional error; intense exercise; motor adaptation; motor memory consolidation.

Figures

FIGURE 1

Study procedure. Schematic overview of the procedure of the four study sessions. TONI, test of non-verbal intelligence; 20mSRT, 20-meter shuttle-run test; rVMA, rotational visuomotor adaptation task; LONG, 13-min long exercise bout before the rVMA task; SHORT, 5-min short exercise bout before the rVMA task; CON, no exercise before the rVMA task; IE, intense exercise.

FIGURE 2

Rotational visuomotor adaptation task (rVMA) and initial directional error (IDE) variable. The center dot is the starting home position for each trial. The remaining dots are the targets which appeared every 2 s in one of eight possible locations (45, 90, 135, 180, 225, 270, 315, and 360°) and remained visible during 750 ms. To compute the IDE, two movement trajectories were defined: the ideal trajectory and the real initial trajectory. Ideal trajectory was defined as the linear vector from the center of the test screen to the target. The real initial trajectory was defined as the linear vector from the test screen center to the cursor position 80 ms after the movement onset. IDE stands for the output error before visual feedback was available to correct the cursor trajectory, so IDE was an indirect measure of the motor planning of the movement.

FIGURE 3

Group average learning curves for the raw initial directional error (IDE) during the adaptation set. Each data point represents the average of eight consecutive trials (one epoch). LONG, long exercise bout before the rVMA task; SHORT, short exercise bout before the rVMA task; CON, no exercise before the rVMA task.

FIGURE 4

Group average error and rate of learning during the adaptation set by group. Mean and standard deviations of the initial directional error (IDE) and the rate of learning (RL-IDE) during the adaptation set of the rotational visuomotor adaptation task (rVMA) are presented. Normalized IDE and RL-IDE values are compared among groups. A significant main group effect is represented by (∗). LONG, long exercise bout before the rVMA task; SHORT, short exercise bout before the rVMA task; CON, no exercise before the rVMA task.

FIGURE 5

Mean and standard deviation for the rotational visuomotor adaptation task (rVMA) error performance by group during retention. Normalized error values for the average retention initial deviation error (IDE) are compared by group. Significant differences are represented by (∗). LONG, long exercise bout before the rVMA task; SHORT, short exercise bout before the rVMA task; CON, no exercise before the rVMA task.