The association of physical activity to neural adaptability during visuo-spatial processing in healthy elderly adults: A multiscale entropy analysis

Chun-Hao Wang; Chia-Liang Tsai; Philip Tseng; Albert C Yang; Men-Tzung Lo; Chung-Kang Peng; Hsin-Yi Wang; Neil G Muggleton; Chi-Hung Juan; Wei-Kuang Liang

doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2014.10.006

The association of physical activity to neural adaptability during visuo-spatial processing in healthy elderly adults: A multiscale entropy analysis

Brain Cogn. 2014 Dec:92C:73-83. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2014.10.006. Epub 2014 Oct 29.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Physical Education, Health & Leisure Studies, National Cheng Kung University, No. 1, University Road, Tainan City, Taiwan.
² Institute of Physical Education, Health & Leisure Studies, National Cheng Kung University, No. 1, University Road, Tainan City, Taiwan. Electronic address: andytsai@mail.ncku.edu.tw.
³ Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, National Central University, No. 300, Jhongda Road, Jhongli City 320, Taiwan; Taipei Medical University - Shuang Ho Hospital, Brain and Consciousness Research Center, New Taipei City, Taiwan.
⁴ Division of Interdisciplinary Medicine & Biotechnology and Margret & H.A. Rey Institute for Nonlinear Dynamics in Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, No. 201, Shipai Road, Taipei City, Taiwan.
⁵ Central for Dynamical Biomarkers and Translational Medicine, National Central University, No. 300, Jhongda Road, Jhongli City 320, Taiwan; Research Center for Adaptive Data Analysis, National Central University, No. 300, Jhongda Road, Jhongli City 320, Taiwan.
⁶ Division of Interdisciplinary Medicine & Biotechnology and Margret & H.A. Rey Institute for Nonlinear Dynamics in Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Central for Dynamical Biomarkers and Translational Medicine, National Central University, No. 300, Jhongda Road, Jhongli City 320, Taiwan.
⁷ Center for Physical Education, Tzu Chi University, Taiwan; Department of Biomedical Informatics, Asia University, Taiwan.
⁸ Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, National Central University, No. 300, Jhongda Road, Jhongli City 320, Taiwan; Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.
⁹ Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, National Central University, No. 300, Jhongda Road, Jhongli City 320, Taiwan.
¹⁰ Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, National Central University, No. 300, Jhongda Road, Jhongli City 320, Taiwan. Electronic address: weikuangliang@gmail.com.

PMID: 25463141
DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2014.10.006

Abstract

Physical activity has been shown to benefit brain and cognition in late adulthood. However, this effect is still unexplored in terms of brain signal complexity, which reflects the level of neural adaptability and efficiency during cognitive processing that cannot be acquired via averaged neuroelectric signals. Here we employed multiscale entropy analysis (MSE) of electroencephalography (EEG), a new approach that conveys important information related to the temporal dynamics of brain signal complexity across multiple time scales, to reveal the association of physical activity with neural adaptability and efficiency in elderly adults. A between-subjects design that included 24 participants (aged 66.63±1.31years; female=12) with high physical activity and 24 age- and gender-matched low physical activity participants (aged 67.29±1.20years) was conducted to examine differences related to physical activity in performance and MSE of EEG signals during a visuo-spatial cognition task. We observed that physically active elderly adults had better accuracy on both visuo-spatial attention and working memory conditions relative to their sedentary counterparts. Additionally, these physically active elderly adults displayed greater MSE values at larger time scales at the Fz electrode in both attention and memory conditions. The results suggest that physical activity may be beneficial for adaptability of brain systems in tasks involving visuo-spatial information. MSE thus might be a promising approach to test the effects of the benefits of exercise on cognition.

Keywords: Exercise; Multiscale entropy; Older adults; Visuo-spatial processing.