Exercise Promotes Neuroplasticity in Both Healthy and Depressed Brains: An fMRI Pilot Study

Figure 1

(a) During the encoding task, participants viewed 240 face-name pairs over two nine-minute fMRI runs. Participants were asked if they thought the name suited the face and responded using a response box. Each run included 120 face-name pairs presented for a duration of 3000 ms, jittered with 34 fixation crosses ranging from 3000–9000 ms in increments of 3000 ms. (b) The retrieval task was then performed on a laptop computer outside the MR scanner. Participants were instructed to choose which of the two names was originally paired with the face shown and then asked if they were confident with their choice. This was used to identify the correct successful encoding trials as remembered (correct) versus lucky guesses.

(a)

(b)