Neural evidence for exercise-driven emotional stability via cognitive regulation mechanisms

This study investigated how acute aerobic exercise influences prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation and, in turn, modulates the implementation of two emotion regulation strategies-cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression.

Forty-three undergraduate students completed an emotion regulation task (ERT) before and after exercise under four conditions: viewing neutral images (WNeu), viewing negative images (WNeg), cognitive reappraisal (CR), and expressive suppression (ES). A subsequent recognition task was used to verify participants' engagement in ERT. The exercise intervention consisted of 30 min of moderate-intensity cycling, preceded by a 5-min warm-up and followed by a 5-min cool-down. PFC activity was continuously recorded using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) during both exercise and the ERT.

Compared with the pre-exercise ERT session, participants' negative affect during passive viewing of neutral or negative images remained unchanged. However, both cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression showed significantly enhanced efficacy in reducing negative emotional experience after exercise. Notably, post-exercise reductions in right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) activation during expressive suppression were associated with greater decreases in negative affect. During exercise, prefrontal activation largely resembled resting levels, except for a decrease in left VLPFC activation, for which no significant association was observed with post-exercise regulation outcomes.

The elicitation of negative emotion appears relatively stable, whereas a single session of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise enhances neural efficiency in the prefrontal cortex-improving emotion regulation performance while requiring fewer neural resources.