Virtual physical training leads to acute cognitive and neural benefits on young and older adults.

Overview

Acute physical activity has beneficial consequences on the body itself, but also, surprisingly, on cognition (e.g., aerobic exercise leads to an improvement in executive functions), in elderly as well as young adults. Unfortunately, sometimes it is complicated or even impossible to perform aerobic or strength training (e.g. elderly, cardiophatics, patients recovering after a long-term disease, etc.). Here we want to investigate trough an innovative technique (Immersive Virtual Reality) if it is possible to show physical, cognitive and neural improvement after a “virtual physical training”: while the subject is safely sitting and looks at his virtual body walking in first-person perspective, the real body reacts as if he is actually walking (e.g. heart rate increase, as described in previous studies); consequently, we can assume that the virtual physical training can also have beneficial effects on cognitive and neural functions (measured by the functional near-infrared spectroscopy during a test for executive functions).

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My role

I am the PI of this project KAKENHI for early-career scientists. Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Early-Career Scientists, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. PI: Burin Dalila. 19K20639. Tohoku University (Japan). I am ultimately responsible for its creation, development, data collection and analysis, dissemination and budget management.