ArticlePsychology and aging2023
Isometric handgrip exercise speeds working memory responses in younger and older adults.
Article in Psychology and aging, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Protocol paper: Evaluating the effect of isometric handgrip exercise on cognitive fatigue while solving logical reasoning questions.MethodsX · 2026Article
- Mental cost of simple(st) physical exertion.Cognition · 2026Article
- Locus coeruleus modulation of neurophysiological sensory selectivity differs in autism and other mental health conditions.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Effects of physical effort on temporal processing.Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance · 2025Article
- Arousal increases locus coeruleus blood flow, salience-related brain responses, and modulates negative-valence attentional biases.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Higher handgrip strength is linked to higher salience ventral attention functional network segregation in older adults.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Isometric handgrip exercise speeds working memory responses in younger and older adults.Psychology and aging · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Physiological arousal affects attention and memory, sometimes enhancing and other times impairing what we attend to and remember. In the present study, we investigated how changes in physiological arousal-induced through short bursts of isometric handgrip exercise-affected subsequent working memory performance. A sample of 57 younger (ages 18-29) and 56 older (ages 65-85) participants performed blocks of isometric handgrip exercise in which they periodically squeezed a therapy ball, alternating with blocks of an auditory working memory task. We found that, compared with those in a control group, participants who performed isometric handgrip had faster reaction times on the working memory task. Handgrip-speeded responses were observed for both younger and older participants, across working memory loads. Analysis of multimodal physiological responses indicated that physiological arousal increased during handgrip. Our findings suggest that performing short bouts of isometric handgrip exercise can improve processing speed, and they offer testable possibilities for the mechanism underlying handgrip's effects on performance. The potential for acute isometric exercise to temporarily improve processing speed may be of particular relevance for older adults who show declines in processing speed and working memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
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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.