Cognitive fatigue due to exercise under normobaric hypoxia is related to hypoxemia during exercise, 2022, Genta Ochi et al

Abstract

We previously found that a 10-min bout of moderate-intensity exercise (50% maximal oxygen uptake) under normobaric and hypoxic conditions reduced executive performance and neural activity in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC).

To examine whether this cognitive fatigue is due to a decrease in SpO2 during exercise, we compared executive performance and related prefrontal activation between two experimental conditions, in which the participants inhaled normobaric hypoxic gas, (hypoxic exercise [HE]) or hypoxic gas adjusted so that SpO2 during exercise remained at the resting level (milder hypoxic exercise [ME]). ME condition showed that reaction time in executive performance decreased (t[13] = 2.228, P < 0.05, d = 0.34, paired t-test) and left DLPFC activity increased (t[13] = -2.376, P < 0.05, d = 0.63, paired t-test) after exercise compared with HE condition.

These results showed that the HE-induced reductions in the left DLPFC activity and executive performance were both suppressed in the ME condition, supporting the hypothesis that exercise-induced cognitive fatigue under hypoxic environment is due to hypoxemia during exercise. This may lead to the development of a method of coping with cognitive fatigue due to exercise that causes hypoxemia.

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