Research by Genta Ochi and Colleagues Published in Scientific Reports
You may have seen athletes lose concentration or make a poor decision during sport. Many students in the Department of Health and Sports may have experienced this themselves while competing.
We refer to exercise-induced declines in cognitive functions supported by the prefrontal cortex, such as attention and decision-making, as cognitive fatigue, and have investigated its mechanisms.
In earlier work, we developed an experimental model in which just 10 minutes of exercise under hypoxia induced cognitive fatigue. The model used gas containing 13% oxygen to simulate an altitude of approximately 3,500 m (Ochi et al., NeuroImage, 2018).
The present study demonstrated that a reduction in arterial oxygen saturation during exercise contributes to cognitive fatigue induced by exercise under hypoxic conditions.