Oxygen inhalation shows “promising potential” for neurorehabilitation, researchers reported yesterday.
Dr Marc Dalecki of the German University of Health and Sports in Berlin, and colleagues tested the effectiveness of a simple oxygen treatment.
They recruited 40 healthy young men and women and gave half of the group Normobaric 100% oxygen treatment, which is often given as a first-line intervention in neurological trauma. The remainder received air.
The gases were given via nasal cannula during a visuomotor experiment. Those taking 100% oxygen showed significantly improved learning, which was retained during later phases of the experiment.
In Frontiers in Neuroscience yesterday the authors write: “We conclude that this simple and brief Normobaric 100% oxygen treatment dramatically improved fundamental human motor learning processes and may provide promising potential for neurorehabilitation and skill-learning approaches.”
They call for further testing on neurologically impaired individuals, and tests measuring other motor learning tasks, as well as the long-lasting effects.
Dr Dalecki said: “A simple and easy to administer treatment with 100% oxygen can drastically improve human motor learning processes,”
Co-author Dr Zheng Wang added: “The oxygen treatment led to substantially faster and about 30% better learning in a typical visuomotor adaptation task. We also demonstrate that the participants were able to consolidate these improvements after the termination of the oxygen treatment.”
Dr Dalecki concluded: “Since it worked in the young healthy brain, we expect that the effects may even be larger in the neurologically impaired, more vulnerable brain.”
Wang, Z. et al. Boost your brain: A simple 100% normobaric oxygen treatment improves human motor learning processes. Frontiers in Neuroscience 11 July 2023; doi: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1175649
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