Aerobic Exercise Improves Cortical Inhibitory Function After Stroke: A Preliminary Investigation.
Jacqueline A Palmer, Alicen A Whitaker, Aiden M Payne and 4 others
PMID 37436187WHAT IT FOUND
In 12 people with chronic stroke, 4 weeks of supervised walking exercise did not improve 6-minute walk distance, but the extra time needed to suppress wrong responses decreased.
Key findings
01Functional walking capacity on the 6-minute walk test and VO2-peak did not change after training.
02The extra time needed to suppress wrong responses decreased after training, but accuracy did not change.
03Group-level brain-wave measures did not change, but a post-training association between a brain-wave measure and response inhibition emerged.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Only 12 participants were analysed, so the study is preliminary and may miss smaller effects. There was no non-exercise control group, so training, natural recovery, or repeated testing could have contributed. Follow-up was only 2 to 7 days after the last session, with no long-term testing. The lactate finding was strongly influenced by the two participants who reached >4.0 mmol/L, and most participants had lower lactate levels. Cognitive test practice effects cannot be fully ruled out, although the authors tried to reduce them.
Declared interests
The authors declared no commercial or financial conflicts of interest. The article is tagged as supported by non-U.S. government and NIH extramural research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that aerobic exercise improves cortical inhibitory function after stroke. This was a small preliminary ancillary study with no non-exercise control, and group-level brain-wave measures did not change.