Abstract
Numerous studies have reported a positive impact of acute exercise for procedural skill memory. Previous work has revealed this effect, but these findings are confounded by a potential contribution of a night of sleep to the reported exercise-mediated reduction in interference. Thus, it remains unclear if exposure to a brief bout of exercise can provide protection to a newly acquired motor memory. The primary objective of the present study was to examine if a single bout of moderate-intensity cardiovascular exercise after practice of a novel motor sequence reduces the susceptibility to retroactive interference. To address this shortcoming, 17 individuals in a control condition practiced a novel motor sequence that was followed by test after a 6-h wake-filled interval. A separate group of 17 individuals experienced practice with an interfering motor sequence 45 min after practice with the original sequence and were then administered test trials 6 h later. One additional group of 12 participants was exposed to an acute bout of exercise immediately after practice with the original motor sequence but prior to practice with the interfering motor sequence and the subsequent test. In comparison with the control condition, increased response times were revealed during the 6-h test for the individuals that were exposed to interference. The introduction of an acute bout of exercise between the practice of the two motor sequences produced a reduction in interference from practice with the second task at the time of test, however, this effect was not statistically significant. These data reinforce the hypothesis that while there may be a contribution from exercise to post-practice consolidation of procedural skills which is independent of sleep, sleep may interact with exercise to strengthen the effects of the latter on procedural memory.
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Notes
While exposure to exercise resulted in approximately 24% greater offline improvement compared to a no-exercise control condition, this difference failed to reach statistical significance.
Initial analyses included gender as a factor and revealed no main or interactive effects. As a result, gender was not considered in subsequent analyses.
A subset of individuals from the CON and INT conditions were added post hoc and administered the graded exercise test to check that initial physiological levels between conditions were similar.
Some reliability and accuracy data for this device have been reported in Bonaventura et al. (2015).
Separate analyses of motor sequence performance were conducted comparing individuals in CON and INT that did or did not receive the graded test to verify that the receipt of this test did not impact performance of the motor sequence tasks. Since no effect of the prior test was observed, all behavioral analyses reported in the subsequent sections, involving the INT and CON conditions, combined the data for all individuals irrespective of whether they experienced the graded exercise test or not.
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David L. Wright declares that he has no conflict of interest. J. S. Jo declares that he has no conflict of interest. J. Chen declares that he has no conflict of interest. S. Riechman declares that he has no conflict of interest. M. Roig declares that he has no conflict of interest.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional review board at Texas A&M University and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Jo, J.S., Chen, J., Riechman, S. et al. The protective effects of acute cardiovascular exercise on the interference of procedural memory. Psychological Research 83, 1543–1555 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1005-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1005-8