Acute and Chronic Physical Activity Increases Creative Ideation Performance: A Systematic Review and Multilevel Meta-analysis.

This study adds important new meta-analytic evidence on the beneficial role of physical activity beyond mental and physical health outcomes: Physical activity has a positive impact on creative ideation, which expands the literature on the role of physical activity in more elementary cognitive functions such as executive control, memory, and attention. Moderator analyses suggested that chronic interventions showed stronger effects than single bouts of physical activity. Rigorously conducted randomized controlled intervention studies and more cross-sectional studies are needed to broaden the evidence in this nascent field of research.