Amelioration of emotional processing deficits in individuals with high trait anxiety following high-intensity interval training

Background: How does exercise alleviate anxiety related emotional processing deficits? This study measured the effect of both high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and moderate-intensity continuous training (MICT) on motor cortical excitability corresponding to emotional perception in individuals with high trait anxiety. Methods: Participants included 16 adults (10 women) with high trait anxiety and were asked to execute an emotion recognition task before and after HIIT, MICT and a control session. During the task, Transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied to the right primary motor cortex 150 ms (early stage) or 300 ms (late stage) after the onset of positive, negative, or neutral images, with the motor-evoked potential (MEP) amplitudes measured. State anxiety was measured using the state portion of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Results: It showed that at 150 ms, HIIT increased MEP amplitudes corresponding to negative stimuli (p < 0.001), and MICT increased MEP amplitudes corresponding to positive stimuli (p = 0.022). State anxiety score was decreased only after HIIT (p = 0.027). Conclusions: Both HIIT and MICT could ameliorate emotional processing deficits by enhancing motor cortical excitability corresponding to emotional perception, and the improvement especially to negative emotions perception by HIIT may be more important for alleviating anxiety. The trial was retrospectively registered in the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (registration number: ChiCTR2500108605; date: 2025/09/02).