Relationship of regular physical activity with neuroelectric indices of interference processing in young adults

Abstract The relationship of physical activity with interference processing was examined using behavioral and neuroelectrical measures in young adults divided into more active and less active groups. The participants completed Stroop (i.e., color‐naming) and reverse Stroop (i.e., word‐meaning) tasks that differed in the level of difficulty while event‐related potentials were assessed. In the low interference Stroop task, participants were asked to respond to the ink color of the word, while the meaning was either congruent or incongruent with the color. In the high interference reverse Stroop task, participants had to indicate the meaning of colored words while ignoring the color of the font. The results indicated that young adults in the more active group exhibited a shorter response time (RT) and a lower intra‐individual variability of RT than did those in the less active group. These behavioral differences were associated with larger P2 and P3 and smaller N450 amplitudes in the Stroop task and with larger P2 and N2 and smaller N450 amplitudes in the reverse Stroop task. No differences were observed in the contingent negative variation (CNV) between the groups. These findings suggest that, for young adults, regular physical activity is positively associated with a better neural efficiency in resource allocation for tasks that require the ability to inhibit cognitive interference and provide evidence for the potential neural mechanisms underlying the improved Stroop performance.