Effects of mild whole-body hypothermia on prefrontal cortex cerebral oxygenation during cycling at moderate, heavy, and severe intensities

Physiology 2019 (Aberdeen, UK) (2019) Proc Physiol Soc 43, PC115

Poster Communications: Effects of mild whole-body hypothermia on prefrontal cortex cerebral oxygenation during cycling at moderate, heavy, and severe intensities

D. Gagnon1,2, N. Barclay1,2, S. Munten1

1. Human Kinetics, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. 2. Center for Research in Occupational Safety and Health, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.

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Mild hypothermia lowers cerebral oxygenation, via lower cerebral blood flow or oxygen consumption, and leads to impaired cognitive functions (Minett et al. 2014; Ferguson et al. 2018). Exercise, however, is known to increase cerebral oxygenation up to heavy intensities before it drops at higher workload (Rooks et al. 2010). Whether the increase in systemic blood flow during exercise, at higher intensities, could be sufficient to re-establish adequate cerebral oxygenation during exercise is unclear. This study examined the combined influences of mild hypothermia and exercise from moderate, to heavy and severe intensities on cerebral oxygenation in healthy adults. Six participants (21 ± 1 yrs, 75 ± 13 kg, 177 ± 10 cm, 21 ± 5 %BF) completed six randomized 5-min cycling sessions as follows: 1) moderate intensity (70% of VT), 2) heavy intensity (40% of the difference between VT and VO2max), and 3) severe intensity (80% of the difference between VT and VO2max), each performed in thermoneutral (TN) (22°C) and cold (CO) (0°C) environmental conditions. The CO condition was initiated following a 0.5°C drop in core temperature to induce mild hypothermia. Each exercise sessions were conducted with a minimum of 20 min or rest. Measures of prefrontal cerebral oxygenation, via changes in oxy-deoxygenated haemoglobin difference (△Hbdiff), was assessed with near-infrared spectroscopy from 6 emitter-detector pairs spread evenly across the right and left prefrontal areas of the head. Heart rate (HR), cardiac output (Q), stroke volume (SV) responses were collected via intrathoracic bioimpedence. Two-way RM ANOVA were used (exercise intensities and environments) to determine differences with a level of significance set at p<0.05. SV and Q were not influenced by temperature while HR was lower in CO (151 ± 3 beats/min) compared to TN (157 ± 4) across exercise conditions (p<0.05). Hbdiff was consistently lower during CO vs. TN in moderate (-3.9 ± 4.9 vs. 3.6 ± 6.0 µM), heavy (-7.0 ± 5.6 vs. 3.5 ± 5.3 µM), and severe (-4.9 ± 7.0 vs. 4.1 ± 6.1 µM) (p<0.05). In conclusion, while mild hypothermia reduces cerebral oxygenation, exercising, at any intensities, did not re-establish tissue oxygenation. The implications of the results suggest that the systemic increase in blood flow, expected at higher exercise intensities, was inconsequential to the lower hypothermia-induced cerebral metabolic demand and oxygenation.



Where applicable, experiments conform with Society ethical requirements.

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