The Impact of Martial Arts on Executive Functions

Impact: Health/Quality of life

Description of impact

This Project Assess neurocognitive Changes continged to Martial Arts Practice, specially in a wide reange of Executive Functions. The benefits observed in our research support the use of Martil Arts training as a Community-based intervention for any individual who needs a boost in executive functions.

Impact Summary for the General Public

Executive Functions are key human abilities required for survival and social achievement; but they are very fragile. Compared to how easily we can lose them there is very little understanding on how to improve them. Most interventions are either short lived or they fail to generalize to everyday life. Our research has demonstrated that Martial Arts has a beneficial effect on certain Executive Functions that generalise to other contexts and have a strong impact on well being. Our research has the potential of using Martial Arts as Community based interventions for adults in need of Neuropsychological rehabilitation of Executive Functions.

Description of the underpinning research

There is substantial evidence that training in Martial Arts is associated with improvements in cognitive function in children; but little has been studied in healthy adults. Here, we studied the impact of extensive training in Martial Arts on cognitive control in adults. To do so, we used the Attention Network Test (ANT) (Johnstone & Mari-Beffa (2008) and a Mixing Costs protocol (2022) to test two different groups of participants: with at least 2 years of Martial Arts experience, and with no experience with the sport. Participants were screened from a wider sample of over 500 participants who volunteered to participate. 48 participants were selected in each of the studies. Martial Artists and Controls were matched on a number of demographic variables that included Age and BMI, following the results of a previous pilot studies where these factors were found to significantly impact the ANT and Mixing Costs measures. Effects of Martial Arts experience was found on the Alert network, but not the Orienting or Executive ones, as well as in the Mixing Costs, but not on Task switching. More specifically, in both studies Martial Artists showed improved performance when alert had to be sustained endogenously, performing more like the control group when an exogenous cue was provided. This result was further confirmed by a negative correlation between number of years of Martial Arts experience and the costs due to the lack of an exogenous cue suggesting that the longer a person takes part in the sport, the better their endogenous alert is. Results are interpreted in the context of the impact of training a particular attentional state in specific neurocognitive pathways.

Beneficiaries and reach of impact

Normal Adult Population, Patients Affected of Dysexecutive Syndrome, Older Adult Individuals to prevent cognitive decline.
Impact statusPotential
Category of impactHealth/Quality of life
Impact levelBenefit