The Influences Of Aerobic Exercise On Creativity And Its Neural Mechanism

Creativity is one of the most important foundations to promote social civilization development.It is admired in economic,art,society,psychology,education and industry,and many other areas by public.In the recent years,a lot of researches have confirmed that the ability of creativity can be improved by training intervention.Aerobic exercise is a healthy way of life and it has many benefits to one's physiology and psychology.It is proved that aerobic exercise could influence our body function,especially the positive influence of cardiopulmonary function and structure,which has been confirmed by many studies.On the other hand,the influence of aerobic exercise on creativity has received the attention of many scholars at home and abroad.But,the large amounts conclusions of this domain are not consistent and convincing,because creativity and aerobic exercise both are extremely complex concepts.For example,some scholars hold that aerobic exercise could promote the improvement of one's creativity level,while other scholars thought that aerobic exercise would prevent the ascension of creativity.In fact,the reasons lead to the opposite conclusion could be The reasons are summarized as the following three reasons: first,the aerobic exercise time,aerobic exercise include long-term aerobic exercise and short time aerobic exercise;second,the intensity of aerobic exercise,intensity is moderate or acute;third,the measure method of creativity,creativity is a complex concept including divergent thinking and convergent thinking.Because of the three reasons above,the impact of aerobic exercise on creative always vary widely.In addition to the limits of methods,we don't know the real impact of aerobic exercise on the creative and its neural mechanism.Therefore,we are trying to detect the influences of aerobic exercise on the creativity and the neural mechanisms of these impacts.This study has three purposes: 1)detecting the impact of short-term aerobic exercise on divergent thinking and convergent thinking;2)detecting the impact of long-term aerobic exercise on divergent thinking and convergent thinking;3)exploring the cognitive and neural mechanisms of these impacts.In order to achieve these three aims,we have designed three experiments.In the first study,42 volunteers participated in our experiment.We randomly divided subjects into two groups: exercise group and control group.The experiment was divided into Before test and After test.In order to avoid the practice effects,we measured Before and After at least 1week time interval.In the pretest,we guide the participants sit in front of the computer to do creativity test task.Seven days later,the participants came to the laboratory again.We measured their heart rate and mood test questionnaire(PANAS)according to the registration order of the subjects.For the control group,after they finish mood questionnaire,they have to quietly sitting on the bike.For the exercise group,they have to exercise 30 minutes on a bike.When all participants complete bikes,they need to finish the mood questionnaire again.Then,they have to do another version of creativity test.The experimental results show that the exercise group have positive on RAT performance than control group.The results are still stability excluding daily exercise,post-positive mood as covariates(F=5.967,P=0.019).In study 2,we randomly divided 64 participants into exercise group and control group.The experimental group and control group subjects both were asked to finish the Stroop task as a baseline level of inhibition ability.Then,the exercise group cycled on bike for 30 minutes,while control group quietly sit on the bike for the same long time.All participants would finish the Stroop task again as their inhibition level after experimental operations.In addition,they also were asked to complete AUT and RAT tasks.We use independent sample t test to analyses the different impact of exercise on creativity.The results show the exercise group scores higher than the control group in AUT,but no obvious difference.In RAT task,the exercise group had a significantly higher score than control group(t=2.921,p=0.005).The Stroop interference effect was significantly decreased after aerobic exercise(t=-2.12,p=0.039).A mediation analysis suggested that Stroop interference effect mediated the relationship between the different experience conditions and RAT score(bootstrap estimate=0.35;95% confidence interval: 0.0024).The results imply that acute bouts of cycle ergometer training enhance convergent thinking,and the cognitive mechanism may be related to inhibition ability increasing after cycling.In order to explore the influences of long-term aerobic exercise on different aspects of creativity and the neural mechanism of these impacts,we adopt the methods of questionnaire survey and magnetic resonance imaging of high resolution structures(3D-T1).In our large database,we screening out 18 participates who take exercise three times a week or more as long-term exercise group,24 subjects who hardly do aerobics every week or under once time aerobic exercise as no exercise group.Firstly,we measured the creativity and the Stroop test of two group's participants.Then,we used the voxel-based morphometry(VBM)method to examine the brain structure differences.The behavioral results showed that long-term aerobic exercise group in convergent thinking test is higher than the no exercise group,and the differences reached significant level(p<0.05).MRI results found that the long-term aerobic exercise group has the greater gray matter volume than the no exercise group in the areas including the medial frontal lobe,the supplementary motor area,ACC.For these regions are the core brain areas of executive function and creativity,we conclude that the long-term aerobic exercise could restructure brain to improve the ability of executive function and creativity.