Physical activity and cognition in children and youth: A systematic review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background. Systematic reviews show a favourable relationship between physical activity (PA) and cognition in children and youth, but the predominance of observational study designs limits causal inferences. This systematic review will fill a research gap by including only studies that employed randomized controlled designs. Methods. PRISMA guidelines were followed after registration in PROSPERO. Inclusion criteria were: randomized controlled design; manipulated PA once (acute) or more (chronic), compared to no PA or other types/durations/intensities of PA, in apparently healthy children (1 month-17 years); and examined cognitive function, brain function, or brain structure outcomes. Study screening and data extraction were performed in duplicate. Results. 84 studies from 83 manuscripts were included (N=12,600 unique participants; Mrange=0.77-17 years). Most studies were rated as having low risk of bias. Compared to controls, most studies (n=52) reported at least one favourable effect of PA on cognitive function and few (n=6) reported an unfavourable effect. Examining all cognitive function outcomes within each study, PA had mostly no effect (nacute=29, nchronic=47) or a mix of favourable and no effect (nacute=20, nchronic=27). For brain function, acute PA was associated with no change (n=2) whereas chronic PA was associated with a mix of increases, decreases, or no change (n=3). For brain structure, two overlapping studies found either favourable or no effects of chronic PA. Discussion. In children and youth, PA is unlikely to be detrimental to brain health and it may confer some benefits. More research is needed to better understand the impact of PA on brain structure and function.Acknowledgments: The Organix Foundation and the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Foundation
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.040 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.008 | 0.006 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.009 | 0.011 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".