Excessive athletic exercise can tire the brain

Prolonged athletic training has similar cognitive effects with prolonged intellectual work.

Excessive athletic exercise can tire the brain
Excessive athletic exercise can tire the brain

by Bastien Blain, Cyril Schmit, Anaël Aubry, Christophe Hausswirth, Yann Le Meur, Mathias Pessiglione

Main titles

  • Extensive athletic training affects cognitive control which is needed to limit impulsive behavior.

Athletics and the brain

  • When triathletes were exposed to excessive training loads their decision making was affected and they acted more impulsively.

"The lateral prefrontal region that was affected by sport-training overload was exactly the same that had been shown vulnerable to excessive cognitive work in our previous studies," - Mathias Pessiglione of Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris. "This brain region therefore appeared as the weak spot of the brain network responsible for cognitive control."

Source: cell.com/current-biology