Have you ever wondered why you feel better - less stressed - when you’ve finished a run, ride or swim? Well it seems the aerobic exercise improves emotion regulation.
Recent research from a team from the Department of Sport Psychology, School of Sport Science, Shanghai University of Sport, found aerobic exercise improves the three stages of emotion regulation: perception, valuation and action. It reduces the perception of negative emotions, encourages individuals to reinterpret emotional situations in a positive or non-emotional manner, and enhances control over emotion expression behaviours. These effects are generated via increased prefrontal cortex activation, the strengthening of functional connections between the amygdala and several other brain regions, and the enhancement of the plasticity of key emotion regulation pathways and nodes. The effect of aerobic exercise on emotion regulation it seems is influenced by the exercise intensity and duration, and by individuals’ exercise experience.
The team did not uncover what aerobic exercise was doing neurally to have this impact on emotion regulation but hint at future research in this area.
This research may also explain another recent study by Massachusetts General Hospital who found that exercise reduces stress in the brain. We know that stress tends to be associated with our emotions so with aerobic exercise improving our emotional regulation it would seem logical that it impacts our ability to deal with stress.
The team analysed medical records and other information of 50,359 participants from the Mass General Brigham Biobank who completed a physical activity survey. A subset of 774 participants also underwent brain imaging tests and measurements of stress-related brain activity. Over a median follow-up of 10 years, 12.9% of participants developed cardiovascular disease. Participants who met physical activity recommendations had a 23% lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease compared with those not meeting these recommendations.
Individuals with higher levels of physical activity also tended to have lower stress-related brain activity. Notably, reductions in stress-associated brain activity were driven by gains in function in the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain involved in executive function (i.e., decision making, impulse control) and is known to restrain stress centres of the brain. Moreover, reductions in stress-related brain signalling partially accounted for physical activity’s cardiovascular benefit.
The researchers also found in a cohort of 50,359 participants that the cardiovascular benefit of exercise was substantially greater among participants who would be expected to have higher stress-related brain activity, such as those with pre-existing depression.
So it seems that aerobic exercise give us a win-win. It helps us regulate our emotions and reduces stress related signalling in the brain which in turn provides an added benefit of reducing our risk of cardiovascular disease.