Effects of Coordination Exercises on Social Functioning: Evidence from fMRI and Social-ability Measures

Abstract

Objective: Research has demonstrated the positive effects of physical activities on social cognition. The purpose of the present study was to find out whether coordination exercises have a beneficial effect on enhancing social functioning. We investigated the activation of the brain areas associated with doing one-person coordination exercises, as compared to doing two-person coordination exercises. We were interested in testing the hypothesis that two-person coordination exercises activate those brain areas underlying communication abilities, empathy in “theory of mind” (ToM), and working memory in social cognition.

Materials: Thirty-four Japanese college students served as subjects.

Methods: In the MRI system, the subjects carried out block-designed cognitive tasks containing affective visual stimuli (pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral stimuli). Then they got out of the MRI system and performed both one-person coordination and two-person coordination exercises. Just after the exercises, they were retested using the same types of the affective stimuli in the MRI system. We examined social abilities in terms of empathizing and memory span.

Results: The present study provided evidence that coordination exercises activate language, working memory, and theory of mind functions. One of the fMRI results to be noted is that the right, but not the left, anterior cingulate correlated with the working memory function.

Conclusions: We provided evidence for the effect of performing coordination exercises on the activation of the left frontal gyrus related to social functioning. We could also provide support for the hypothesis that two-person coordination exercises activate both the working memory function and the ToM function.