Effects of acute resistance exercise on cognition in late middle-aged adults: General or specific cognitive improvement?

Objectives: To evaluate the effect of acute resistance exercise on multiple cognitive measures in late middle-aged adults and to address the question of whether general or selective cognitive improvements occur. Design: A counterbalanced repeated-measures experimental design. Methods: Thirty adults (mean age = 58.1 +/- 3.0 years) were administered five different Stroop test conditions before and after a single bout of resistance exercise and after a no-treatment control. The resistance exercise protocol involved two sets of seven exercises performed at 70% of a 10-repetition maximum, with 30 and 60s between each set and each exercise, respectively. Results: The exercise treatment resulted in significantly enhanced performance across all Stroop conditions when compared with the control (p <.001). Furthermore, the effect of the exercise treatment on Stroop incongruent performance corresponded to the largest positive influence compared to the performance observed under the other four Stroop test conditions. Conclusions: These findings extend the current knowledge base by demonstrating that acute resistance exercise facilitates general cognition but has a more beneficial effect on cognition that involves executive control. (C) 2013 Sports Medicine Australia. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.