Scientific Programme
Psychology, Social Sciences & Humanities
IS-SH01 - Delving into the subjective perspective of physical exercise and cognition from an individual approach
Date: 07.07.2026, Time: 12:00 - 13:15, Session Room: SG 1138 (EPFL)
Description
How do our bodies, minds, and subjective experiences interact when we push our limits, whether in sport or daily life? This symposium explores these questions by combining insights from neuroscience, psychology, and sports science, showing how effort connects the physical and cognitive domains of human performance. First, we will discover how athletes’ lived experiences can now be captured using a novel technique called Temporal Experience Tracing (TET). This method transforms momentary subjective states into continuous data, bridging the gap between inner experience and objective performance. Next, we will delve into the neural mechanisms of sustained effort, exploring how the brain regulates persistence and fatigue across both physical and cognitive challenges. Through advanced EEG recordings and psychological profiling, new evidence suggests that a shared brain network may underlie our ability to stay engaged, whether we’re exercising or solving complex problems. Finally, we turn to the mental benefits of physical exercise. Can a short cycling session before work boost concentration and resilience during demanding mental tasks? By combining physiological and experiential measures, such as pupil responses and subjective feeling trajectories, we will uncover how exercise might extend mental endurance and enhance well-being. Together, these studies highlight a new perspective in understanding human effort: one that integrates body, brain, and subjective experience.
Chair(s)
Marika Berchicci
University , Department of Psychology
Italy
Speaker A
Daniel Sanabria
University of Granada, Experimental Psychology
Spain
Read CVECSS Lausanne 2026: IS-SH01 [26629]
Quantifying the dynamic phenomenology of endurance sport through temporal experience tracing and its relation to physiological and performance data
In today’s era of technology, endurance athletes, whether professional or recreational, have unprecedented access to data. From physiological signals such as heart rate to objective performance metrics like running speed, these numbers are readily available and easy to track. This wealth of information allows athletes and coaches to monitor progress daily and to tailor training programs. Yet, performance is not defined by objective performance numbers alone. It also involves the lived experience of the athlete, the thoughts, sensations, and emotions that accompany training and competition. Sports science has long acknowledged this “mental” dimension as fundamental, emphasizing constructs such as perceived effort, pain, affect, and flow as central to endurance performance. Traditionally, these experiences have been assessed through questionnaires, rating scales, or qualitative interviews. However, while these tools have provided valuable insights, they fail to provide continuous data on the athlete’s phenomenological experience. In this presentation, I will introduce recent work using Temporal Experience Tracing (TET), an innovative approach for studying the phenomenology of endurance sports. TET involves the retrospective reconstruction of subjective experience by plotting a continuous line on Cartesian axes, with time on the X-axis and intensity of a chosen dimension (e.g., perceived effort) on the Y-axis. These traces are then converted into quantitative data, enabling analysis similar to other continuous variables. Unlike single-point scales or interviews, TET offers a way to capture the dynamic flow of experience and enables researchers to link it directly to objective performance indicators.
Speaker B
Marika Berchicci
University , Department of Psychology
Italy
Read CVECSS Lausanne 2026: IS-SH01 [4618]
Neural Correlates of Sustained Effort: A Multilevel Investigation of Individual Variability and Domain-General Mechanisms Across Physical and Cognitive Demands
Effort represents a core dimension of human performance, bridging physical exertion and cognitive demand. However, interindividual differences have often been overlooked in most existing studies on cognitive effort or mental fatigue. Psychological and skill-related individual variables may confound the interpretation of results if not properly controlled, especially when investigating the relationship between physical and cognitive effort. In this presentation, I will discuss recent research aimed at characterizing the neural correlates of sustained effortful behavior and exploring how individual variability modulates these processes, under the hypothesis that the neural mechanisms underlying effort generalize across physical and cognitive domains. To address this question, a multi-level approach was adopted, combining behavioral, psychological, and neurophysiological data. Participants completed both physical and cognitive time-to-exhaustion tasks, each matched for individualized workload. Psychological variables were examined within the framework of approach–avoidance tendencies, assessed through two self-report measures (i.e., the Physical Effort Scale and the Need for Cognition scale), alongside subjective assessments, including the NASA–TLX workload index and Temporal Experience Tracing (TET), which captured six experiential dimensions. Continuous high-density EEG was recorded to investigate the Action-Mode Network (AMN), encompassing the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula, hypothesized to support effortful control and performance maintenance across domains. Preliminary findings suggest that the AMN may serve as a domain-general substrate for effort regulation, while its organization and dynamics adapt to the specific nature of the demand (motor vs. cognitive).
Speaker C
Darías Holgado
Unidistance Suisse, Faculty of Psychology
Switzerland
Read CVECSS Lausanne 2026: IS-SH01 [34993]
Exercise to preserve cognitive endurance performance? The role of self-paced exercise intensity at subjective and psychophysiological level
The benefits of exercise for mental performance have attracted the attention of many researchers in the last decades. Here, we will address this topic from a new perspective: how physical exercise can improve mental endurance time. This study addresses the growing interest in the potential mental benefits of exercise, particularly before the workday, (e.g., active commuting) to enhance arousal, focus, and productivity. Before engaging in a mental endurance task until failure, participants complete a 20 min cycling exercise at a fixed intensity, or a self-paced intensity or a control condition, to understand if exercise modality plays a key role in the relationship between physical exercise, mental performance, and the associated subjective experience. To comprehensively assess the subjective and psychophysiological dynamics of mental task performance, this study employs the Temporal Experience Tracing (TET) method to measure fluctuations in subjective feelings over time; and pupillometry to assess the psychophysiological response to exercise and mental effort. Preliminary analyses suggest that subjective experiences during mental endurance tasks encompass multiple dimensions that can be organized into distinct patterns rather than a single construct. Self-paced exercise seems to provoke a better subjective response, although early results also indicate that exercise modality does not modulate the positive benefit of physical exercise before the mental endurance task. Additionally, physiological measures such as pupil size and gaze behaviour provide complementary insights into mental load and subjective states. Data collection and analysis are ongoing to further refine and confirm these observations. Preliminary results seem to provide evidence of the multidimensional subjective experience of mental endurance effort and the potential benefit of physical exercise to prolong mental endurance performance.