Effects of Coordination Exercises on Brain Activation: A Functional MRI Study

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of coordination exercises on brain activation as measured by functional MRI. In this study, we defined coordination exercises as exercises with a greater degree of complexity and quality, as compared to the control exercises. We hypothesized that coordination tasks evoke more brain activation than control tasks, based on the attributes of coordination exercises requiring adjustment and judgment. Two experiments were designed to study the differences in the effects of brain activation between the coordination exercises and the simpler movements of the control exercises. The first experiment compared brain activation when subjects viewed video images of the coordination exercises with that when they viewed video images of the control exercises. The second experiment compared brain activation when subjects actually performed the coordination exercises with that when they performed the control exercises. These experiments demonstrated that performing and viewing coordination exercises activated the brain activities related to motor control to a much greater degree than those of the control exercises. The results of this study indicate that coordination exercises contribute to the improvement of motor activities and also cognitive control, lending support to claims for the effectiveness of coordination training in medicine as well as in sports.