Background: Although an extensive body of literature is trying to
verify the acute effects of exercise, findings are highly contradictory due to
many different study protocols. The number of studies using an intermittent
exercise (IE) protocol is limited, especially with regard to comparison across
the life span. We examined whether the effects of a HIIE protocol on performance
in a perceptual-cognitive task (NeuroTracker® (NT)) differed
between children, young adults, and older adults to address this gap.
Methods: A total of 36 participants participated in the present study:
12 children (CH, 6 females, 9.83 1.19 years), 12 young adults (YA, 6
females, 23.5 3.55 years), and 12 older adults (OA, 4 females, 66.92
4.08 years). The IE treadmill protocol used in the present study
consisted of eleven 30-second intervals at 90% VOmax, interspersed with
2-minute active recovery periods at 50% VOmax. Before and during this
exercise protocol, three series of the NeuroTracker® task were
performed after 5, 15, and 25 minutes. Results: We observed a
significant main effect time and a significant main effect group regarding
absolute NT scores and progression during IE. YA had significantly higher
absolute NT scores than CH and OA. The normalized perceptual-cognitive task
progression was observed in OA and YA but not in CH. YA, in particular, showed
progression in the NT performance during IE. Conclusions: The present
study confirmed previous findings on age-related differences in NT performance.
Based on these findings, the effects of different exercise protocols (e.g.,
continuous vs. intermittent) seem to be a worthwhile subject for future
investigations. Normalized speed thresholds should best capture improvement
differences between groups to compare results across studies better, as pre-test
values are taken as the baseline.