Table 4 Brain outcomes: findings from systematic reviews and meta-analyses
Author | Population | Systematic review results | Meta-analysis results |
|---|---|---|---|
Critically low-quality reviews | |||
Gunnell et al. [27] | Healthy children (1–17.99 years) | For brain function, increases, no changes or a mixture were interpreted as being supportive of brain function; for brain structure, results were favourable or null Brain functiona: PA vs none: Activation (n = 86, s = 3): 1/3 no change, 2/3 increased, decreased and no change ([study 1] decreased during anti-saccade task, increased or no change during flanker task; [study 2] no change in frontal or supplementary eye fields, increased in bilateral prefrontal cortex and decreased in bilateral parietal cortex) Resting-state synchrony (n = 37, s = 1): 1/1 increases, decreases and no change Blood flow (n = 30, s = 1): 1/1 no changes in cerebral blood flow velocity Brain structure (n = 36, s = 2, same sample): PA vs none: 1/2 improved white matter coherence and myelination, 1/2 no change | NA |
Bustamante, Williams, and Davis [39] | Overweight or obese children and/or adolescents | Benefits for neurologic outcomes following PA in high quality studies (RCT, s = 4, 2/4 brain function, 2/4 brain structure), but all from the same group; results from a quasi-experimental study (s = 1) suggest a neural benefit, but the study is of low rigor and suffers from confounding | NA |
Lubans et al. [41]b | Children (7–11 years) | 5/6 studies reported significant brain changes (2/6 using EEG, 4/6 using MRI one of which explored brain structure), but there was little overlap between studies | NA |