Physiological Effects of Exercise
Common known benefits of exercise include helping maintain a healthy cardiovascular system by preventing high blood pressure. Exercising is different for everyone and varies greatly between age groups. Regardless of the type of exercise or age group, exercising has profound effects on the body. These effects can be exhibited mentally, emotionally and physiologically. As a person ages, their brain becomes more developed and is required to know how to perform difficult cognitive tasks. The population becomes segmented into those who exercise frequently and those who do not. College students and adults are busy with studying, work life has much less time.
The segmentation of individuals who exercise and of those who don't may cause a gap to form in the cognitive abilities of the individuals. If an individual begins to exercise suddenly they may experience cardiovascular and cognitive benefits in addition to improvements in physical health. The study will allow baseline values between groups to be compared as well as the immediate effects of exercise on cognition of populations of students with different activity levels. General techniques used/ population.
When a person exercises the body turns to glucose and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) for energy. This energy helps an individual perform quick movements and changes in position as well as aid in muscle contractions needed during exercise \cite{klein}. During exercise, heart rate is increased to allow more oxygen to be pumped throughout the body. Blood containing nutrients and oxygen is delivered to active muscles. This increase in oxygen allows brain cells to function at higher levels \cite{klein}. After exercising for a month, a person will start to feel less tired when they exercise as changes in the heart muscle occurred to adapt to the increased load of exercising \cite{on}.
Exercise also triggers neurotransmitters to be released from the brain. Among these neurotransmitters are endorphins and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Endorphins help reduce pain signals and GABA helps to improve mood and decrease anxiety when released \cite{endorphins}.
Cognitive Effects of Exercise
Throughout past research, studies have found that people who exercise self-report that physical activity affects their mental abilities, but the direction of the reported effect is not consistent throughout the literature (Tomporowski & Ellis, 1986). While people report that exercise affects their cognitive abilities, there is also experimental evidence. For example, conduct a study of existing research on the influence exercise on brain functioning \cite{Hillman_2008}. From their research, Hillman, Erickson, and Kramer found that in human and non-human studies, exercise and aerobic fitness can have positive effects on various aspects of cognitive functioning, however, most of the research is done in populations of older adults. For our study, we would like to study college-aged populations, specifically non-athlete and athlete college-aged populations. \cite{Jacobson_2014} strived to discover how cognitive performance differs in athletes versus non-athletes. To measure cognitive performance, the researchers test for the executive functioning of everyone in their study by having participants complete the Delis- Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEPS) Tower Test and the Color-Word interference test \cite{Jacobson_2014}. Jacobson and Matthaeus (2014) found athletes performed better on some of the executive functioning testing compared to the non-athlete group. This study focused on long term exercise in athletes and the effects on cognitive functioning. In our study, however, we would like to look at the more short-term effects of cognitive functioning directly after exercise.
For our study, we have developed two hypotheses. Our first hypothesis is that athletes will have a lower resting heart rate than non-athletes along with a lower heart rate during and after moderate physical activity. Our second hypothesis is that when compared to their pre-exercise cognitive task score, non-athletes will perform worse on their post-exercise cognitive task when compared to athletes.
Methods
The study population comprised of female students currently enrolled at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. Eighteen students participated in the study and ranged in age from 18 to 22 years old. Two subsets of volunteer subjects participated in this study: students competing on a DIII sports team at Clarkson University and students not competing on a DIII sports team at Clarkson University. Students who are a member of a DIII sports team are classified as "athletes" and the students who are not a member of a sports team are classified as "non-athletes". Due to time constraints, studying a larger population of students was not feasible. Using such a small set of participants may skew the data and this was taken into consideration when analyzing the data.
Procedure 1: Electric Blood Pressure Monitor
The study will be using an electric blood pressure monitor to measure the blood pressure and pulse of the participants. The participant rests their arm on the table and the sleeve of the electric blood pressure monitor is placed on their arm. It is important that the arrow on the sleeve aligns with the artery of the participant. After the sleeve is fastened, the start button is pressed and the participant's blood pressure and pulse is taken and reported on the monitor's screen.
Procedure 2: Heart Rate
The participant will fasten an Apple Watch to their wrist, which will allow heart rate to be recorded throughout the duration of the experiment. Heart rate is taken by pressing the heart button on the screen. During the exercise, a stair-stepping exercise program was run on the apple watch to record the heart rate throughout and the average heart rate during the two minutes.
Procedure 3: Cognitive Task (Math)
The participant will complete as many multiplication and division questions as they can in a minute. The participants will receive different sets before and after. The cognitive test will be set up ahead of time as to minimize time lost from the participant finishing the step-up exercise to the time they perform the cognitive test.
Procedure 4: Exercise (Step- ups)
The participant will perform step-ups for two minutes. A step-up exercise is like running in place, but instead of running, the participant steps up and down from an elevated surface in place. The participant will perform the step ups to the beat of a metronome (135) so that the pace is kept constant.