Resistance-induced brain activity changes during cycle ergometer exercises

EEGs are frequently employed to measure cerebral activations during physical exercise or in response to specific physical tasks. However, few studies have attempted to understand how exercise-state brain activity is modulated by exercise intensity.

Ten healthy subjects were recruited for sustained cycle ergometer exercises at low and high resistance, performed on two separate days a week apart. Exercise-state EEG spectral power and phase-locking values (PLV) are analyzed to assess brain activity modulated by exercise intensity.

The high-resistance exercise produced significant changes in beta-band PLV from early to late pedal stages for electrode pairs F3-Cz, P3-Pz, and P3-P4, and in alpha-band PLV for P3-P4, as well as the significant change rate in alpha-band power for electrodes C3 and P3. On the contrary, the evidence for changes in brain activity during the low-resistance exercise was not found.

These results show that the cortical activation and cortico-cortical coupling are enhanced to take on more workload, maintaining high-resistance pedaling at the required speed, during the late stage of the exercise period.