Acute Tai Chi Chuan exercise enhances sustained attention and elicits increased cuneus/precuneus activation in young adults

Background The potential for acute exercise to enhance attention has been discussed in the literature. However, the neural mechanisms by which acute exercise affects attention remain elusive. Method In this study, we first identified an optimized acute Tai Chi Chuan (ATCC) exercise protocol that enhances sustained attention performance and then aimed to determine the neural substrates of exercise-enhanced attention. Reaction time (RT) from the psychomotor vigilance test (PVT) was used to evaluate sustained attention. In Experiment 1, improvements in RTs were compared among six different exercise protocols. In Experiment 2, the participants completed the PVT in an MRI scanner on both rest and exercise days. Results Experiment 1 showed that practicing TCC 3 times for a total of 20 minutes, followed by 10-minute rest periods, resulted in the largest improvements in RTs. Experiment 2 showed that ATCC enhanced sustained attention, as evidenced by shorter RTs, and resulted in greater cuneus/precuneus activation after exercise than in the rest condition. Exercise-induced changes in brain activities across a distributed network exhibited significant correlations with attention. Conclusion Therefore, this study indicates that ATCC effectively enhances sustained attention and underscores the key role of the cuneus/precuneus and frontoparietal-cerebellar regions in facilitating vigilance among young adults.