[ad_1]
By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, September 26, 2019 (HealthDay News) – A new study says excessive exercise can tire your brain.
The results show that despite the benefits of endurance sports, an excessive training load can have adverse effects on your brain, French researchers said.
"Our findings draw attention to the fact that neuronal states are important: you do not make the same decisions when your brain is tired," said author of the study, Mathias Pessiglione, of the Pitié-Salpitère Hospital in Paris.
For this study, 37 male endurance researchers continued their normal workout or increased 40% workout per session for three weeks.
Functional MRI showed that overloaded athletes had a slower response in the lateral prefrontal cortex.
Athletes who have exhausted themselves to exhaustion have shown reduced activity in an area of the brain important for decision-making. And they seemed more impulsive in the tests that evaluated financial decision making, going for immediate rewards rather than for larger rewards that would take longer, according to the researchers.
The results are in September 26 Current biology.
"The lateral prefrontal area affected by sports training overload was exactly the same as that exposed to excessive cognitive work in our previous studies," Pessiglione said in a press release.
This area of the brain was a weak point in cognitive control – the ability to process information and control behavior, he said.
Pessiglione's work suggests that both mental and physical stress require cognitive control.
It can be important to monitor fatigue levels to avoid bad decisions outside the sport field, in areas as diverse as politics, law and finance, the researchers said.
[ad_2]
Source link