In the fight against the sedentary lifestyle of the population there are practices that attract attention. We focus this time on cycling on “desk bikes” , which are a kind of adaptation of office desks to which an exercise bike or pedals have been added to the bottom. The objective of this practice is to improve the health of those people who spend hours and hours sitting in the office.
Thus, a question that arises almost immediately is whether workers would be as efficient pedaling as without pedaling. To solve this question, Tine Torbeyns, from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium and several collaborators from different countries of the world have carried out a study whose objective was to analyze the efficiency of workers who practiced static cycling in the office.
A total of 23 people participated in the experiment, who were evaluated through various tests of verbal memory, selective attention (inhibition of irrelevant information) and sustained attention over time. In addition, records of brain electrical activity were made by electroencephalography while pedaling seated at the desk.
The research results, recently published in the journal PLoS ONE (2016), showed that the performance of the participants was similar whether they pedaled or not in tasks such as typing on the computer, remembering words in the memory test, or in sustained and selective attention tasks . Surprisingly, when the participants were pedaling, it was observed that the reaction time in the attention tasks was shorter, that is, they reacted faster to the information. There were no changes in brain waves measured with electroencephalography.
The authors conclude that pedaling in the office not only does not seem to decrease performance in skills such as memory or typing, but it also seems to positively influence the speed of response required in attention tasks. This is yet another proof of the positive effects of physical exercise on brain function.
Marisa Fernández Sánchez, Senior Neuropsychologist, Unobrain
