How Mild Exercise Affects Eye Blink Frequency and Executive Function in Young Adults

Emerging research indicates that brief, light physical activity like a slow jog can temporarily enhance executive functions, essential for decision-making, problem-solving, and cognitive control. While previous animal studies have shown that mild exercise activates dopaminergic and noradrenergic neurons in the brainstem—neural pathways important for brain performance—direct insights into how such activity influences the human brain have been limited.

A fascinating aspect of this new study involves spontaneous blinking, an involuntary action closely linked to brainstem dopaminergic activity. The researchers hypothesized that an increase in blink rate following mild exercise might correlate with improvements in executive functions.

To explore this, they reanalyzed data from a prior experiment involving healthy young adults who engaged in 10 minutes of mild exercise. Interestingly, the overall average blink rate did not significantly rise after exercise. However, individual differences became apparent: participants who showed an increase in blink frequency tended to experience greater cognitive benefits, suggesting that personal neural responses to exercise may influence cognitive outcomes.

These findings are published in the Journal of Physiological Anthropology and highlight the potential of blink rate as a simple, non-invasive biomarker for monitoring brain activity related to exercise-induced cognitive improvements. With further research, this biomarker could help develop personalized exercise strategies to boost motivation and cognitive health, based on an individual's neural responsiveness.

Source: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-06-mild-exerciseinduced-eye-frequency-differences.html