Synergistic effects of tDCS combined with aerobic exercise on pulmonary function and heart rate in sedentary young people.

To investigate the synergistic effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) combined with aerobic exercise (AE) on pulmonary function- and heart rate-related indices in sedentary young people and to explore their correlation. Forty-eight subjects were randomly divided into the AE + tDCS group and the AE + sham tDCS group. The AE + sham tDCS group underwent 40 min of moderate-intensity AE and 30 min of sham tDCS intervention, whereas the AE + tDCS group received 30 min of tDCS intervention along with 40 min of moderate-intensity AE, 5 times per week for 4 weeks. In these subjects, the forced vital capacity (FVC), peak expiratory flow (PEF), forced expiratory volume in the first second (FEV1), FEV1/FVC, resting heart rate (RHR), aerobic peak heart rate (HRpeak), heart rate recovery at 1 min (HRR1), and heart rate recovery at 3 min (HRR3) were assessed before and after the intervention. Compared with the preintervention period, the AE + tDCS group showed significant improvements in pulmonary function (FVC, PEF, FEV1, and FEV1/FVC) and heart rate (RHR, HRR1, and HRR3) (p < 0.05). Additionally, compared with the AE + sham tDCS group, the AE + tDCS group showed significant improvements in lung function (FVC, PEF, FEV1, and FEV1/FVC) (p < 0.05), and heart rate (RHR and HRR3) (p < 0.05). Moreover, the difference between the pre- and postintervention FVC, FEV1, and RHR values in the AE + tDCS group showed significant improvement (p < 0.05). This study also revealed a significant correlation between differences in the pulmonary function- and heart rate-related indicators pre- and postintervention. tDCS combined with AE can effectively improve indices related to pulmonary function and heart rate in sedentary young people, and correlations between the FEV1/FVC ratio and the HRpeak, HRR1 and HRR3 values were detected.