Figure 1.
Experimental design and associative memory task. (A) Overview of the experimental protocol composed of a VO2max visit, followed by three experimental visits, and a retest visit performed 3 months after the last experimental visit. Individual maximal cardiac frequency (FcMax) was assessed during the VO2max visit. All experimental visits started at 9AM and included two MRI sessions (encoding and test) separated by a physical exercise or rest session. Physical exercise was either of moderate intensity (30 min cycling at 60% FcMax) or of high intensity (15 min cycling at 75% FcMax). Blood samples were collected twice in each experimental visit, before and after exercise or rest. PVT and POMS questionnaire were administered after exercise or rest. (B) Examples of series of pictures for each theme: office, shoe shop, or house. (C) Examples of direct trials, inference of order 1, and order 2 trials. Direct trials were used during the learning, test, and retest sessions, inferences 1 and 2 trials were used during test and retest sessions. (D) Example of control trials. All the presented images were downloaded from the Flickr Creative Commons repository without restrictions to reuse or modify under CC-BY open-access license (https://www.flickr.com/).