ReviewBrain sciences2020
The Contribution of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to the Understanding of the Effects of Acute Physical Exercise on Cognition.
Review in Brain sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Can motion capture improve task-based fMRI studies of motor function post-stroke? A systematic review.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2025Pooled it
- Look into my eyes: What can eye-based measures tell us about the relationship between physical activity and cognitive performance?Journal of sport and health science · 2023Pooled it
- The Neural Mechanism of Long-Term Motor Training Affecting Athletes' Decision-Making Function: An Activation Likelihood Estimation Meta-Analysis.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Pooled it
- Effects of Acute Aerobic Exercise and Task Repetition on the Neural Correlates of Executive Function in Young and Older Adults: A Crossover fMRI Study.Journal of magnetic resonance imaging : JMRI · 2026Trial
- Effects of Physical Exercise Breaks on Executive Function in a Simulated Classroom Setting: Uncovering a Window into the Brain.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Trial
- The Motor Engram of Functional Connectivity Generated by Acute Whole-Body Dynamic Balance Training.Medicine and science in sports and exercise · 2022Trial
- Higher VOScientific reports · 2021Trial
- All Is Relative-A Call for Considering "Physiologically Informed" Control Conditions to Improve the Mechanistic Understanding of the Effects of Physical Exercise on Cognition.Scandinavian journal of psychology · 2026Review
- Editorial for "Effects of Acute Aerobic Exercise and Task Repetition on the Neural Correlates of Executive Function in Young and Older Adults: A Crossover fMRI Study".Journal of magnetic resonance imaging : JMRI · 2026Article
- A Single Bout of Intermittent Hypoxia Increases Cerebral Blood Flow and Supports an Executive Function Benefit.Psychophysiology · 2025Article
- Beyond FITT: addressing density in understanding the dose-response relationships of physical activity with health-an example based on brain health.European journal of applied physiology · 2025Review
- Assessing Exercise and Fitness-Related Brain Health Using Multi-modal Magnetic Resonance Imaging Outcomes.Advances in neurobiology · 2025Review
- Passive exercise provides a simultaneous and postexercise executive function benefit.Frontiers in cognition · 2024Article
- Resting-State Functional Connectivity Change in Frontoparietal and Default Mode Networks After Acute Exercise in Youth.Brain plasticity (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2024Article
- Effects of acute physical activity on brain metabolites as measured by magnetic resonance spectroscopy (Heliyon · 2023Article
- Neurobiological effects of exercise intervention for premenstrual syndrome.Cognitive neurodynamics · 2023Article
- A single bout of passive exercise mitigates a mental fatigue-induced inhibitory control deficit.Experimental brain research · 2023Article
- Move Your Body, Boost Your Brain: The Positive Impact of Physical Activity on Cognition across All Age Groups.Biomedicines · 2023Review
- Exercise as therapy for neurodevelopmental and cognitive dysfunction in people with a Fontan circulation: A narrative review.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2023Review
- Shared brain and genetic architectures between mental health and physical activity.Translational psychiatry · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The fact that a single bout of acute physical exercise has a positive impact on cognition is well-established in the literature, but the neural correlates that underlie these cognitive improvements are not well understood. Here, the use of neuroimaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), offers great potential, which is just starting to be recognized. This review aims at providing an overview of those studies that used fMRI to investigate the effects of acute physical exercises on cerebral hemodynamics and cognition. To this end, a systematic literature survey was conducted by two independent reviewers across five electronic databases. The search returned 668 studies, of which 14 studies met the inclusion criteria and were analyzed in this systematic review. Although the findings of the reviewed studies suggest that acute physical exercise (e.g., cycling) leads to profound changes in functional brain activation, the small number of available studies and the great variability in the study protocols limits the conclusions that can be drawn with certainty. In order to overcome these limitations, new, more well-designed trials are needed that (i) use a more rigorous study design, (ii) apply more sophisticated filter methods in fMRI data analysis, (iii) describe the applied processing steps of fMRI data analysis in more detail, and (iv) provide a more precise exercise prescription.
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What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.