Performing excess of exercise can tire your brain to an extent where you may experience trouble in decision-making, says a new study.
The findings of the study reveal that in spite of the advantages that endurance sports offer, excess of training could have bad effects on the brain, said French researchers.
As per author of the study Mathias Pessiglione, the study points towards the fact that a person doesn’t make similar decisions when the brain is fatigued.
The researchers took the help of 37 male endurance sports athletes for the study. They asked the athletes to continue with their normal training or else elevate training by 40 percent per session in a course of 3 weeks. The researchers then conducted functional MRIs which showed that the overloaded male athletes had slower response level in their lateral pre-frontal brain cortex.
Athletes that exercised to a point where they were exhausted showed lower activity level in the brain area vital for decision making. Moreover, they seemed more impulsive during the tests which examined their ability to make financial decisions. They chose immediate rewards over bigger ones which would require more of time to attain, found the researchers.
The study suggests that both physical and mental effort require cognitive control.