Altered Brain’s Regional Homogeneity By An Acute Bout Of Moderate Aerobic Exercise:an Exploring Resting-state FMRI Study

A growing number of behavioral and cognitive neuroimaging studies have reported the beneficial influences of acute and chronic exercise on cognitive functions and mood states. This study is to investigate the effect of acute aerobic exercise on brain rest-state regional homogeneity activity, and further explore its correlated neural substrates utilizing resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (R-fMRI).Adopted within-subject study design, before and after a30min single bout of moderate aerobic exercise on treadmill,15right-handed female healthy in-college volunteers during rest state were scanned respectively. Significant ReHo clusters including the areas of frontal and parietal lobes were observed in both sessions (P<0.0001, uncorrected). After the acute moderate aerobic exercise, the ReHo significant increased regions were found in the right rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), the right anterior insula cortex (alC), the right medial parietal cortex (MPC), the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), the right Inferior parietal lobule cortex (IPL), the left Inferior parietal lobule cortex (IPL), the left medial parietal cortex (MPC), the left medial occipital cortex (cuneus)(P<0.05, AlphSim-corrected).Our findings indicate that the acute bout of moderate aerobic exercise can evoke neural activity increase in the resting-state. The selectively increased areas of brain activity significantly correspond with the aerobic exercise-driven neuropsychological effects of cognitive function and mood states. R-fMRI provides a new effective way to investigate the cognitive effects of exercise.