Beneficios de la manipulación de la carga mental del ejercicio físico sobre el rendimiento cognitivo, académico y deportivo

Abstract

Regular physical exercise has been associated with multiple health benefits, including a reduction in the risk of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and mental disorders. Additionally, recent studies have found that exercise produces not only functional but also structural changes in the brain, and has been shown to be related to improvements in cognitive and academic performance in children and adults. Recent meta-analyses have demonstrated that a combination of aerobic and strength exercise produces more significant benefits than if both types of exercise were practiced independently. External stimuli during cognitive exercises, such as games that require information processing and the use of executive functions to achieve success, may also contribute to improving cognitive performance based on the "cognitive stimulation hypothesis," but it is difficult to find studies in the literature that compare the effect between a practice with mental load versus one without it. The mental load associated with these activities has two dimensions: one purely cognitive and one emotional. The environmental conditions of the game or task with this type of demand subject individuals to a continuous process of initiation, control, and flexibility of behavior, which is believed to stimulate component processes of cognitive function. Sports such as basketball, which require attention in a constantly changing environment to perceive necessary information and make decisions, are considered an excellent context for improving cognition. One of the most used paradigms to see the effect of applying mental load on sports performance is the dual-task paradigm, in which the athlete must perform the specific skill of their sport while undergoing a secondary task that demands some of their attentional resources. The results show a deterioration in performance in novices but not in experts, suggesting that the secondary cognitive task does not interfere with skill execution. However, it has not been verified whether the cognitive secondary task was stimulating enough to affect motor performance. The main objective of this International Doctoral Thesis was to examine the impact of performing physical exercise with mental load on cognitive performance (i.e. executive functions), the morphology of brain structures, and sports performance. To achieve this, three experimental studies were conducted, including two cross-sectional studies and a longitudinal study that involved a 4-month training intervention with a control group, a fitness group, and a group that practiced basketball as a physical exercise with the presence of mental load. The results of the cross-sectional studies were that when the amount of stimuli to update and maintain information in working memory increased, its precision decreased. Additionally, the findings demonstrated that the frustration and anxiety provoked by the task also negatively affected performance. Regarding the longitudinal study, it was found that physical exercise practice can improve performance in executive functions: an improvement was observed only in the cognitive flexibility of the fitness group, while the improvement in inhibitory control was significantly greater in the group whose practice involved cognitiveemotional components that increased the mental load of the task. Additionally, changes were observed in the structure of the prefrontal cortex of the brain through magnetic resonance imaging. Specifically, an increase was found in the dorsal, medial, and ventrolateral regions in the group that practiced physical exercise with mental load.