Immediate Effect of Exercise on Executive Function in Youth Group

摘要

The benefit of physical activity and exercise is protecting against the deterioration of brain tissue with age. Previous studies have suggested that exercises have positive effects on cognition, but gender difference is still unclear. Therefore, we focus on the gender difference in cognitive ability, which is an important component for daily living and quality of life, before and after exercise. However, executive function is a higher-order cognitive function for daily life, including planning, scheduling, inhibiting, and working memory. We measure the executive function by tasks of psychology, including Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), Tower of Hanoi and N-back test. Fifty-six participants were recruited with the mean age of twenty-three years. Participants were asked to complete the WCST, Tower of Hanoi and N-back test before and after the exercise which be executed at least thirty minutes. Finally, we calculated the scores of tasks before and after exercise. The results indicated that there was a significant positive exercise effect on the WCST, Tower of Hanoi and N-back test in executive function and also found the light gender differences in the three tasks of psychology.