• M W Voss, L Chaddock, J S Kim, M Vanpatter, M B Pontifex, L B Raine, N J Cohen, C H Hillman, and A F Kramer.
• Beckman Institute and Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL 61801, USA. mvoss@illinois.edu
• Neuroscience. 2011 Dec 29; 199: 166-76.

AbstractThis study examined whether individual differences in aerobic fitness are associated with differences in activation of cognitive control brain networks in preadolescent children. As expected, children performed worse on a measure of cognitive control compared with a group of young adults. However, individual differences in aerobic fitness were associated with cognitive control performance among children. Lower-fit children had disproportionate performance cost in accuracy with increasing task difficulty, relative to higher-fit children. Brain activation was compared between performance-matched groups of lower- and higher-fit children. Fitness groups differed in brain activity for regions associated with response execution and inhibition, task set maintenance, and top-down regulation. Overall, differing activation patterns coupled with different patterns of brain-behavior correlations suggest an important role of aerobic fitness in modulating task strategy and the efficiency of neural networks that implement cognitive control in preadolescent children.Copyright © 2011 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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