Neurobiological effects of exercise intervention for premenstrual syndrome

Up to 75%-90% of women have varying degrees of premenstrual syndrome (PMS). Exercises are recognized to be beneficial to regulate the negative emotions associated with PMS; however, the effects of exercise on sadness inhibition have not yet been investigated from the neurobiological perspective.

This study examined the effects of a single exercise intervention on the neural mechanisms mediating sadness response inhibition at the cortical level using multichannel event-related potential (ERP) recording in women with PMS.

Participants performed Go/No-go trials while viewing of sad or neutral images before and after exercise intervention, and changes in the No-go-evoked N200 (N2) ERP component were measured by electroencephalography (EEG) at multiple cortical sites. The associations of PMS Inventory scores with N2 amplitude and latency changes were then examined using Pearson's correlation analysis.

There were no significant differences in N2 latency and response error rate following exercise compared to baseline. However, women with higher PMS Inventory scores (greater symptom severity) demonstrated significantly lengthen N2 latency at the Fz electrode sites during correct sad face No-go trials after exercise (p < 0.05), which was not the case in the pre-exercise baseline. We detected no significant relationship between the PMS score and N2 amplitude, either pre- or post-exercise.

Women with higher PMS severity exhibited longer sad N2 latencies as well as slow down the speed of reaction to negative stimuli by exercise, suggesting that the prefrontal emotion regulation network is involved in PMS symptoms and is sensitive to the beneficial effects of exercise.