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Enhanced brain network flexibility by physical exercise in female methamphetamine users

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Abstract

Methamphetamine (MA) abuse is increasing worldwide, and evidence indicates that MA causes degraded cognitive functions such as executive function, attention, and flexibility. Recent studies have shown that regular physical exercise can ameliorate the disturbed functions. However, the potential functional network alterations resulting from physical exercise have not been extensively studied in female MA users. We collaborated with a drug rehabilitation center for this study to investigate changes in brain activity and network dynamics after two types of acute and long-term exercise interventions based on 64-channel electroencephalogram recordings of seventy-nine female MA users, who were randomly divided into three groups: control group (CG), dancing group (DG) and bicycling group (BG). Over a 12-week period, we observed a clear drop in the rate of brain activity in the exercise groups, especially in the frontal and temporal regions in the DG and the frontal and occipital regions in the BG, indicating that exercise might suppress hyperactivity and that different exercise types have distinct impacts on brain networks. Importantly, both exercise groups demonstrated enhancements in brain flexibility and network connectivity entropy, particularly after the acute intervention. Besides, a significantly negative correlation was found between Δattentional bias and Δbrain flexibility after acute intervention in both DG and BG. Analysis strongly suggested that exercise programs can reshape patient brains into a highly energy-efficient state with a lower activity rate but higher information communication capacity and more plasticity for potential cognitive functions. These results may shed light on the potential therapeutic effects of exercise interventions for MA users.

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Data availability statement

The data in this paper will be made available on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks for the support from the Science and Technology Innovation 2030—Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Intelligence Project (2021ZD0201301 and 2021ZD0200204), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (17ZDA330 and U20A20221), Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Committee of Shanghai outstanding academic leaders plan (21XD1400400). Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Project (No. 202001012). We also thanks for Prof. Conggang Yin participated in coordinating experimental data collection.

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  1. Xiaoying Qi and Yingying Wang have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology and MOE Frontiers Center for Brain Science, School of Life Science and Human Phenome Institute, Research Institute of Intelligent Complex Systems and Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Xiaoying Qi & Yuguo Yu

  2. School of Psychology, Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai, 200438, China

    Yingying Wang, Yingzhi Lu, Qi Zhao, Yifan Chen & Chenglin Zhou

  3. Physical Education Institute, Jimei University, Xiamen, 361021, China

    Qi Zhao

  4. Department of Physical Education and Humanities, Nanjing Sport Institute, Nanjing, 210014, China

    Yifan Chen

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  1. Xiaoying Qi
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  3. Yingzhi Lu
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  4. Qi Zhao
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  7. Yuguo Yu
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Contributions

CZ and YY supervised the research, YL, YW, QZ, YY and CZ designed the research, XQ, YW, YL, YC and QZ performed the research, XQ, YW, YL, YC and YY wrote the analysis tools and analysed the data, YW, XQ, QZ, YC, YY and CZ wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Chenglin Zhou or Yuguo Yu.

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Qi, X., Wang, Y., Lu, Y. et al. Enhanced brain network flexibility by physical exercise in female methamphetamine users. Cogn Neurodyn (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11571-022-09848-5

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