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No Sex Difference in Mental Fatigue Effect on High-Level Runners' Aerobic Performance
Thiago Ribeiro Lopes, Diogo Machado Oliveira, Paula Brandão Simurro1
1Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Clinical Neurosciences, Department of Psychiatry, Federal University of São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, BRAZIL.
Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise
|April 7, 2020
Summary
Mental fatigue negatively impacts aerobic exercise performance and perceived effort in elite athletes, regardless of sex. Athletes may possess resilience against mental fatigue
Area of Science:
- Exercise Physiology
- Sports Science
- Cognitive Psychology
Background:
- Sedentary individuals may experience greater mental fatigue from cognitive tasks, potentially impairing exercise performance.
- The impact of acute mental fatigue on endurance performance and perceived effort in elite athletes, considering sex differences, is not well understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether acute mental fatigue induction increases perceived effort and reduces endurance performance in professional athletes.
- To determine if these effects are influenced by sex in elite athletes.
Main Methods:
- A single-blinded, randomized, controlled crossover study involving 30 elite athletes (15 women, 16 men).
- Participants underwent a 45-minute cognitive task (Stroop's test) to induce mental fatigue or watched a documentary as a control.
- Following the intervention, athletes performed a treadmill time-to-exhaustion test, with perceptual and physiological measures recorded.
Main Results:
- The cognitive task successfully induced mental fatigue in both sexes, evidenced by perceptual and cognitive performance changes.
- Mental fatigue led to increased perceived effort, earlier anticipation of maximal effort, and reduced time to exhaustion in both men and women.
- No significant sex differences were observed in the cardiorespiratory or metabolic responses to the time-to-exhaustion test, nor in the impact of mental fatigue.
Conclusions:
- Prolonged cognitive tasks induce mental fatigue, increase perceived effort, and impair aerobic performance in professional runners, irrespective of sex.
- These findings suggest that athletic status may confer a degree of protection against the detrimental effects of mental fatigue in women compared to men.
- Further research is needed to explore the mechanisms underlying this potential protective effect in athletes.
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