ArticleFrontiers in psychology2026
Neural evidence for exercise-driven emotional stability via cognitive regulation mechanisms.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Habitual Aerobic Exercise Is Associated with Reduced Negative Emotional Elicitation: An fNIRS Study.Brain sciences · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objective: This study investigated how acute aerobic exercise influences prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation and, in turn, modulates the implementation of two emotion regulation strategies-cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Methods: Forty-three undergraduate students completed an emotion regulation task (ERT) before and after exercise under four conditions: viewing neutral images (WNeu), viewing negative images (WNeg), cognitive reappraisal (CR), and expressive suppression (ES). A subsequent recognition task was used to verify participants' engagement in ERT. The exercise intervention consisted of 30 min of moderate-intensity cycling, preceded by a 5-min warm-up and followed by a 5-min cool-down. PFC activity was continuously recorded using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) during both exercise and the ERT. Results: Compared with the pre-exercise ERT session, participants' negative affect during passive viewing of neutral or negative images remained unchanged. However, both cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression showed significantly enhanced efficacy in reducing negative emotional experience after exercise. Notably, post-exercise reductions in right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) activation during expressive suppression were associated with greater decreases in negative affect. During exercise, prefrontal activation largely resembled resting levels, except for a decrease in left VLPFC activation, for which no significant association was observed with post-exercise regulation outcomes. Conclusion: The elicitation of negative emotion appears relatively stable, whereas a single session of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise enhances neural efficiency in the prefrontal cortex-improving emotion regulation performance while requiring fewer neural resources.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.