Discussion
chronic stroke
In the present study, we investigated the impact of high-intensity aerobic exercise paired with motor training on cognitive-motor function in individuals living with chronic stroke. After a 5-day intervention pairing either exercise or rest before a paretic arm implicit motor learning task, we observed significant improvements in cognitive processing speed with TMT-A, but not with TMT-B with the less-affected arm. We also used resting-state functional brain imaging to determine if changes in functional connectivity between the DLPFC and the sensorimotor network would be observed after our intervention and whether these changes would relate to behavioural changes. Across all participants we observed a decrease in DLPFC-sensorimotor network functional connectivity that was correlated with a change in overall TMT-A task performance (ρ = 0.453), and the TMT-A dwell time (ρ = 0.418).