The Effect of Two Types of Exercise (Endurance and Resistance) on Attention and Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor Levels in Sedentary Students

Abstract

The vital role of exercise in many aspects of daily life and somewhat cognitivefunctions are acknowledged but a point that has recently gained researchers'attention is to investigate the effect of different types of exercises on cognitivefunctions and the mediating mechanisms of this effect. The aim of this study was todetermine the effect of two types of endurance and resistance exercises on thelevels of attention and BDNF of sedentary students. Therefore, 46 sedentarystudents from University of Tehran (mean age 24.3+1.8 yr) were assigned to threegroups: endurance, resistance and control after the Stroop pretest. After bloodsamples had been collected, the subjects continued their exercise protocol for fiveweeks. Finally, at least 48 hours after the last session, the Stroop test wasperformed and blood samples were collected in order to eliminate the temporaryeffects of exercises. For data analysis, Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, paired sample ttest, one–way ANOVA, MANOVA test, Dunnett's T3 post hoc test and Pearsoncorrelation coefficient test were used (P≤0.05). Results showed a significantimprovement in the response time of Stroop test in both endurance and resistancegroups while expression of BDNF significantly increased only in endurance group(P0.05). There wasno significant correlation between the variations of response time of the Stroop testand expression of BDNF (P>0.05). Finally, this research indicated that exercisecan improve cognitive functions, but there was no significant difference betweenendurance and resistance exercises in response to this question that which activitywas more useful.

Keywords

• attention
• endurance exercise
• neurotropic
• resistance exercise
• sedentary