Resistance-induced brain activity changes during cycle ergometer exercises

Background: EEGs are frequently employed to measure cerebral activations during physical exercise or in response to specific physical tasks. However, few studies have attempted to understand how exercise-state brain activity is modulated by exercise intensity. Methods: Ten healthy subjects were recruited for sustained cycle ergometer exercises at low and high resistance, performed on two separate days a week apart. Exercise-state EEG spectral power and phase-locking values (PLV) are analyzed to assess brain activity modulated by exercise intensity. Results: The high-resistance exercise produced significant changes in beta-band PLV from early to late pedal stages for electrode pairs F3-Cz, P3-Pz, and P3-P4, and in alpha-band PLV for P3-P4, as well as the significant change rate in alpha-band power for electrodes C3 and P3. On the contrary, the evidence for changes in brain activity during the low-resistance exercise was not found. Conclusion: These results show that the cortical activation and cortico-cortical coupling are enhanced to take on more workload, maintaining high-resistance pedaling at the required speed, during the late stage of the exercise period.