Anxiety and depression (AD) are the most common and debilitating mental
health problems in childhood and adolescence. High-intensity interval training (HIIT)
has been studied as a component of improving inhibitory control, commonly affected
in children with AD. The aim of this study was to investigate the acute effects of HIIT
on heart rate variability (HRV) and on inhibitory control of school children with AD.
We performed a randomized crossover trial with 71 children aged 9 to 13 years, 36
girls and 35 boys, where children performed an acute HIIT training and stretching
protocol (control) on different days. We used the RCADS questionnaire score to
classify children for AD and analyzed this classification of the dispersion by quartiles
(upper and lower). Inhibitory control was evaluated using the Flanker test before and
after exercise, and HRV was obtained using a heart rate monitor and analyzed using
the Kubios software. The effect of exercise was analyzed using pairwise estimation
statistics and repeated measures ANOVA. Our results demonstrate that an acute HIIT
produced improving effects on inhibitory control in both groups, such as the accuracy
of incongruous latency responses, as well as the cost of conflict; in addition to improved
congruent latency for the CAD group. The HRV results demonstrate that acute HIIT
was not able to improve HRV, but there was a positive effect after stretching that needs
further investigation in future works.
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