Depression is associated with functional brain impairments, although comprehensive studies remain limited. This study reviews neural mechanisms underlying cognitive impairment in depression and identifies associated activation abnormalities in brain regions. The study also explores the underlying neural processes of cognitive benefits of exercise intervention for depression. Executive function impairments, including working memory, inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility are associated with frontal cortex and anterior cingulate areas, especially dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Depression is associated with certain neural impairments of reward processing, especially orbitofrontal cortex, prefrontal cortex, nucleus accumbens and other striatal regions. Depressed patients exhibit decreased activity in the hippocampus during memory function. Physical exercise has been found to enhance memory function, executive function, and reward processing in depression patients by increasing functional brain regions and the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) as a nutritional factor also plays a key role in exercise intervention. The study documents neurophysiological mechanisms behind exercise intervention's improved functions. In summary, the study provides insights into neural mechanisms underlying cognitive impairments in depression and the effectiveness of exercise as a treatment.

Anxiety is known to significantly impair cognitive function, particularly attentional control. While exercise has been demonstrated to alleviate these cognitive deficits, the precise neural mechanisms underlying these effects remain poorly understood. This study examines the effects of exercise on attentional control in individuals with high trait anxiety, based on attentional control theory, which suggests that such individuals have reduced top-down attention. Thirty-eight participants were randomly assigned to either an exercise group or a reading group. The exercise group engaged in 30 min of moderate-intensity cycling, while the reading group spent 30 min reading quietly. In Experiment 1, goal-directed attention was assessed using a cue-object paradigm, and in Experiment 2, inhibitory control was evaluated through a visual search task. EEG data indicated that the exercise group exhibited significantly larger Pd components in both experiments, suggesting enhanced attentional focus and improved inhibition of distractors. These findings suggest that aerobic exercise enhances top-down attentional processes, particularly goal-directed attention and distractor inhibition, offering potential as an intervention for individuals with high trait anxiety.

To investigate the effects of repetitive bilateral transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on sleep of latency (SOL) and resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) in individuals. Twenty-eight young adults, aged 21–25 years, with a mean of 22.96 ± 0.87 years, were recruited and randomly grouped into an experimental group(13 people) and a control group (15 people). Subjects in the experimental group received five awake-phase resting-state tDCS over a one-week period, with anodes placed bilaterally in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (F3, F4) and cathode in the left upper arm. The current intensity was 1.5 mA, and the stimulation time was 15 min. The control subjects received pseudo-stimulation, with only the beginning and end of the stimulation for 30 s to receive a gradual rise and fall of the current. The intermediate current intensity was 0 mA, and the rest of the treatment parameters and processes were the same as those in the experimental group. All subjects filled out a sleep diary every day during the experiment. Compared with the pre-intervention period, in the subjective scale results, the sleep of latency factor score in the subjective sleep quality assessment scores of the subjects in the experimental group was significantly lower (p = 0.001); in the EEG results, the theta band power in the midline regions of the brains of the subjects in the experimental group (especially in the central Cz location and the prefrontal cortex) was significantly elevated, whereas the control group did not show such a difference. Transcranial direct current stimulation can significantly reduce the sleep of latency of individuals and enhance theta band power to promote changes in the brain from wakefulness to drowsiness, thus enhancing sleep quality. This enhancement may be due to enhancement of inhibitory executive function. In the future, neuromodulation technology is expected to be applied to insomnia patients, especially those whose main symptom is difficulty falling asleep.

The present study employed a combination of behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures to investigate the effect of ego depletion on perceptual anticipation in tennis-trained undergraduates under negative emotion. The findings will provide a theoretical foundation for enhancing training efficacy in this specific population. Negative emotion was induced by film clips, while ego-depletion was elicited through a Stroop task. Perceptual anticipation was evaluated using temporally occluded tennis videos. Under negative emotion, participants exhibited shorter reaction time and higher accuracy either in the low ego-depletion state or at 160 ms after hitting the ball. Additionally, there was a shorter N2 peak latency at 160 ms after hitting the ball than at the moment of hitting the ball. The peak amplitudes of N2, P3, and LNC mean amplitude were significantly lower under the low ego-depletion state than those under the high ego-depletion state (p < 0.05). The peak amplitudes of N2 and P3 were higher at the moment of hitting the ball than at 160 ms after hitting the ball. Under negative emotion, tennis-trained undergraduates exhibited faster perceptual anticipation speed, higher accuracy, and a reduced allocation of cognitive resources in a low ego-depletion state. Compared to the moment of hitting the ball, tennis-trained undergraduates exhibited better speed-accuracy, earlier attention control, and reduced allocation of attentional and cognitive resources at 160 ms after hitting the ball. The findings suggest that tennis coaches should enhance players' emotional self-regulation skills, optimize training environments, and reduce ego depletion to improve their performance.

Exercise intervention demonstrates unique potential in treating emotional dysregulation, yet the ambiguity of its neuromodulation targets hinders the development of precise exercise prescriptions. This study investigates trait anxiety as a representative emotional disorder in 40 high-trait-anxiety university students, who were randomly assigned to either an exercise intervention group (40 min moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, n = 20) or a non-exercise control group (40 min quiet reading, n = 20), followed by resting EEG data collection. By integrating resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) after exercise with deep learning algorithms, we developed an alpha-band time-frequency predictive model to systematically decode the neural oscillatory reprogramming mechanisms in the prefrontal cortex induced by exercise. The deep learning model exhibited superior classification efficacy (accuracy 83.33%, F1 score 0.83, Kappa coefficient 0.67) in identifying exercise-induced alpha-band power spectral entropy alterations. This study pioneers the identification of prefrontal Alpha excitatory rebalancing through neural oscillation remodeling as the core mechanism underlying exercise-mediated anxiety mitigation.