Azeem Rathore|Barbara Lom
The effects of chronic and acute physical activity on working memory performance in healthy participants: a systematic review with meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials
Davidson College|Davidson College
understanding physical activity pa influences cognitive function populations cognitive impairments dementia increasingly studied topic yielding numerous published systematic reviews contrast however appears less interest examining associations pa cognition cognitively healthy individuals therefore objective review evaluate synthesize randomized controlled trial rct studies investigated effects chronic acute pa working memory performance wmp physically cognitively healthy individuals following preferred reporting items systematic review metaanalysis prisma guidelines systematic review studies published august 2009 december 2016 performed rcts investigating effects chronic acute pa wmp healthy participants sample populations searches conducted annual reviews proquest psycarticles psycinfo pubmed web science main inclusion criteria stipulated 1 healthy sample populations 2 pa interventions 3 wmp outcome 4 rct designs descriptive statistics included cohort intervention characteristics risk bias assessment analytical statistics included metaanalyses moderation analyses 7345 nonduplicates 15 studies eight chronic pa seven acute pa studies met inclusion criteria evaluated overall noticeable variance cohort intervention characteristics sample populations ranged primary school children retirement community members pa ranging cycling yoga majority studies characterized low unclear risk selection performance detection attrition reporting biases metaanalysis chronic pa revealed significant small effect size analysis acute pa revealed nonsignificant trivial result age intensity significant moderators allocation concealment blinding intervention length chronic pa significantly improve wmp acute pa cannot limiting factors acute pa studies point diversity working memory instruments utilized unequal sample sizes studies sample age groups largescale highquality rcts needed order provide generalizable powerful analysis pa wmp systematic approach