Acute Effects of High-Intensity Resistance Exercise on Recognition of Relational Memory, Lactate, and Serum and Plasma Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor

Baumgartner, NW, Belbis, MD, Kargl, C, Holmes, MJ, Gavin, TP, Hirai, DM, and Kao, S-C. Acute effects of high-intensity resistance exercise on recognition of relational memory, lactate, and serum and plasma brain-derived neurotrophic factor. J Strength Cond Res 38(11): 1867-1878, 2024-Acute aerobic exercise improves memory, but this phenomenon is understudied in response to resistance exercise (RE) despite evidence that RE-induced increases in lactate and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) play mechanistic roles in memory performance. To determine the acute effect of RE on lactate, BDNF, and their associations with object and relational memory, blood lactate, and serum and plasma BDNF were taken from 36 adults (average age 23.64 +/- 3.89 years; 18 woman) before and immediately after 42 minutes of high-intensity RE and a rest condition on counterbalanced days. Subjects then immediately studied a series of paired objects and completed object and relational recognition tasks. Results revealed a condition by trial interaction, previously studied objects were remembered less accurately following RE (d = 0.66) but recognition occurred faster (d = 0.28), indicating a speed-accuracy tradeoff following RE. There was no effect of either intervention on relational recognition performance. Lactate (d = 3.68) and serum BDNF (d = 0.74) increased following RE, whereas there was no time-related change in lactate and serum BDNF following rest. However, changes in lactate and BDNF did not predict any measures of object (rs < 0.25, ps > 0.16) or relation recognition (rs < 0.28, ps > 0.13). Collectively, these findings suggest that acute high-intensity RE selectively improves the processing speed of recognizing objects at the cost of less accurate recognition of previously studied objects. Furthermore, changes in object and relational memory performance are unlikely driven by acute increases in lactate or BDNF following high-intensity RE.