The prevalence of underweight among young women is a serious international health issue. However, the evidence on how being underweight negatively affects brain health and cognition is still unclear. This study investigated the association between underweight status, academic performance, and neurocognitive control in young Japanese women using a cross-sectional design. We analyzed the academic performance of female undergraduates, comparing underweight and healthy weight groups (n = 43; age 18–23 years, M = 21.1, SD = 1.3) based on their grade point average (GPA). We also analyzed their error-related negativity (ERN), an electrophysiological measure that potentially reflects academic performance, during an arrowhead version of the flanker task to assess cognitive control of action monitoring. Participants with a low body mass index were found to have lower GPAs. Furthermore, the underweight students exhibited smaller ERN amplitudes, which indicates decreased cognitive control in action monitoring. These findings suggest that a healthy weight status is essential for effective cognitive functioning and academic success in young adult women, among whom being underweight is a serious health problem.

Objectives

It has been demonstrated that long-term mindfulness programs have beneficial effects on cognitive functioning. However, research findings to date regarding the impact of a brief mindfulness exercise are mixed. Moreover, evidence is scarce regarding the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying brief mindfulness exercises. This study aimed to investigate the effects of a brief mindfulness exercise on cognitive processing using behavioral measures and the P3 component of event-related brain potentials.

Method

Forty-eight healthy young adults were randomly assigned to either a brief mindfulness group or a sitting control group. The mindfulness group performed a 20-min session of mindfulness exercise while the control group remained seated for the same length of time. The Flanker task with electroencephalography recording was completed before and after the treatments.

Results

The mindfulness group showed a higher response accuracy and a smaller P3 amplitude at the post-test relative to the pre-test across Flanker conditions, whereas no such changes were observed in the control group. The response time and P3 latency did not change across the groups. These results suggest that a brief mindfulness exercise prompts more accurate responses and reduces attentional resources during the Flanker task, indicating more efficient cognitive processing.

Conclusions

A brief mindful exercise in novices could enhance the accuracy of cognitive performance and calm the neural response in P3. The current study demonstrates that the benefits of mindfulness extend to short sessions and provides a possible explanation for the neural mechanisms driving these benefits.

Growing evidence indicates that culture and education can influence cognitive constructs. Studies targeting Western and Asian populations have shown a positive relationship between aerobic fitness and cognitive control in children; however, this association has yet to be explored in the Arab world. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between aerobic fitness and attentional networks in Egyptian preadolescent children. In total, 103 preadolescent children (9.76 ± 0.11) completed an assessment of aerobic fitness using a 6-min running test and a computerized attention network test that allowed for assessing alerting, orienting, and executive networks. The results revealed that higher aerobic fitness was associated with shorter response time and higher response accuracy in a more cognitively demanding task condition (i.e., incongruent trials). Furthermore, higher aerobic fitness was associated with a more efficient executive network. No associations were observed for alerting and orienting networks. These findings corroborate growing evidence indicating the importance of aerobic fitness for cognitive development and extend the literature by suggesting that the positive association between aerobic fitness and cognitive control might be generalized to the Arab population and not significantly change across cultures.

Background

COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed people’s lifestyles and daily routines around the world. This study aimed to investigate changes in daily step counts – as an indicator of physical activity – before, during, and after the pandemic among university students in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and to identify regional and gender factors that may have influenced physical activity during these periods.

Methods

A total of 1273 university students from Egypt (Assiut University and Zagazig University) and Saudi Arabia (Taif University, King Faisal University, and Imam AbdulRahman Bin Faisal University) provided valid data on their daily step counts recorded by a smartphone application (iPhone Health App) from January 2019 to December 2021. The data was divided and averaged based on three periods: the pre-pandemic year (January to December 2019), the first pandemic year (January to December 2020), and the second pandemic year (January to December 2021).

Results

The results showed a significant decrease in daily steps from pre-pandemic to the first pandemic year, followed by an increase in the second pandemic year. However, daily step counts did not fully recover to pre-pandemic levels in male Egyptian and marginally in male Saudi participants. In both nationalities, female participants did not show a significant difference in daily steps between the pre-pandemic and second-pandemic years. Female Egyptian participants had significantly lower daily step counts than male Egyptian participants, and a gender difference in daily steps was also observed in Saudi female participants in the pre-pandemic and the second pandemic year but not during the first pandemic year.

Conclusion

These findings outline the need for strategies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia to promote physical activity and reduce sedentary behavior, especially among young women, to mitigate the negative consequences of COVID-19 and meet physical activity guidelines.