Cycling reduces the entropy of neuronal activity in the human adult cortex

Abstract

Electroencephalogram (EEG) data is often analyzed from a Brain Complexity (BC) perspective, having successfully been applied to study the brain in both health and disease. In this study, we employed recurrence entropy to quantify BC associated with the neurophysiology of movement by comparing BC in both resting state and cycling movement. We measured EEG in 24 healthy adults, and placed the electrodes on occipital, parietal, temporal and frontal sites, on both the right and left sides. EEG measurements were performed for cycling and resting states and for eyes closed and open. We then computed recurrence entropy for the acquired EEG series. Our results show that open eyes show larger entropy compared to closed eyes; the entropy is also larger for resting state, compared to cycling state for all analyzed brain regions. The decrease in neuronal complexity measured by the recurrence entropy could explain the neural mechanisms involved in how the cycling movements suppress the freezing of gate in patients with Parkinsons disease due to the constant sensory feedback caused by cycling that is associated with entropy reduction.