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Research Article

Resting Frontal Asymmetry as a Biological Marker of Affective Responsivity to Acute Exercise

E.E. Hall, P. Ekkekakis, & S.J. Petruzzello, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801

Examination of affective responses to acute exercise using asymmetrical regional brain activation has shown resting EEG asymmetry to be a biological marker of an individual's predisposition to respond affectively to aerobic exercise. Greater resting left anterior hemisphere activation, relative to the right, has been predictive of enhanced positive affective responses to such emotion-eliciting stimuli. To further examine this explanation with respect to exercise, regional brain activation measured via EEG (F3, F4, P3, P4; referenced to linked-ears) was assessed before treadmill running (30 min @ 75% VO₂max) in 69 subjects (38 males, 31 females; 21.5 ± 2.95 yrs).

Affect was assessed via a 10-item version of Spielberger's State Anxiety Inventory (SA; Form Y-1) and Thayer's ADACL, which yields measures of Energetic Arousal (EA) and Tense Arousal (TA; both SAI & ADACL had adequate reliability & validity). Affective measures were obtained before and 0, 10, 20, and 30 min post-exercise. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that, after partialling out pre-exercise EA, resting frontal asymmetry accounted for 7% of the unique variance in EA (beta=.26, P=0.0065) at 10-min, 11% (beta=.34, P=0.0005) at 20-min, and 7% (beta=.26, P=0.0038) at 30-min post-exercise. Frontal asymmetry did not account for any unique variance in either SA or TA. Parietal EEG also failed to predict any affective responses.

Thus, relatively greater left frontal activation at rest predicted post-exercise increases in EA. These findings replicate previous exercise-EEG research and further support that exercise may be a significant emotion-eliciting event with affective responses being mediated, in part, by differential resting levels of activation in the anterior portions of the cerebral hemispheres.

Supported by NIMH RO3 MH55513-01.