When University of Rhode Island Assistant Professor of Kinesiology Dr. Nicole Logan arrived at the school three years ago, she planned to continue her earlier research on improving childhood health.
“I was really interested in seeing what happens throughout a typical day for a child and how we can best improve their functioning,” Logan told Ocean State Stories. “And when I say functioning, I’m talking about their cognitive functioning and their brain functioning.”
Logan’s research soon expanded to children living with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, which the Mayo Clinic defines as “a long-term condition that affects millions of children” that can continue into adulthood. “ADHD includes a mix of ongoing problems [that] can include having a hard time paying attention, being hyperactive and being impulsive.”
“These children struggle academically throughout the day and not just academically but also at home listening to instructions,” Logan said. “A lot of them are really high-achieving children but the ability to tune in and out is what’s not going so well for them.”
Logan knew that physical activity can help children with ADHD focus better. With URI colleagues Dr. Alisa Baron and Dr. Vanessa Harwood, she recently opened a lab and began recruiting people age six to 17 with and without ADHD for a controlled study. These children and adolescents make two visits to the lab, to ride a treadmill and take academic tests while wearing a so-called “electroencephalogram net (EEG)” that measures brain activity.
The monitoring continues when they leave the lab with “a research grade watch called an ActiGraph, that measures the amount of physical activity they do throughout a day,” Logan said. Similar to an Apple Watch, the device allows researchers to collect data seven days a week when the participants are awake and when they’re sleeping.
The results thus far are encouraging.
“Physical activity is really great at helping with those decision-making processes, these goal-directed attentional problems,” Logan said. “It can help streamline them a little bit more and that can happen after a small bout of exercise but also with regular physical activity every single day.”
Logan came to URI from Northeastern University, where she earned a doctoral degree in psychology. That followed degrees from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, where she was born and raised – and where an accident at the age of 14 ended her dream of representing her country in the Olympics in water polo or basketball, sports in which she had excelled until then.
“I took a charge in basketball and I cracked a rib and I had a stress fracture in (two lower-spine vertebra),” she said. “I was completely out of sports for life then and so that took up all of my teenage and high school years, just recovering.”
Logan couldn’t play, but she eventually maintained her passion for sports by becoming a water polo coach.
She also found her future.
“I was interested in studying exercise science and when I was at university as an undergraduate, I was still recovering from my back injury, I wanted to make sure that I ended up in a career that was complementary to exercise science,” she said. “I ended up diving into psychology and exercise science as a joint degree. I still remember sitting in class one day listening to a professor talk about how exercise can actually act as a stimulus on the brain and can really change the structure and the function of how our brains operate.”
Dr. Eduardo Esteban Bustamante is another prominent scientist who is researching the effects of physical activity on children who live with ADHD. An Associate Professor of Kinesiology and Nutrition at the University of Illinois Chicago’s College of Applied Health Sciences, he is President-Elect of the North American Society for Pediatric Exercise Medicine (NASPEM) and a Trustee on the American College of Sports Medicine’s (ACSM) Board of Trustees.
Like Logan, a colleague and friend, his research has shown promising results.
According to Bustamante, dozens of other studies like his “have shown pretty consistently that, there’s a neurophysiological systemic response to exercise. Your whole sympathetic nervous system comes online. You have the release of a bunch of adrenal hormones. You are more aroused.
“We see better performance on cognitive tasks, especially simple ones. I don’t think we’re anticipating that you become a much smarter person or that you can do really complex things much better after a 30-minute bout of exercise. What we’re anticipating is you are more focused and more able to just engage. And so you’re not going to be a better chess player, but you are going to just be able to do a simple, focused task better. And that lasts for some period of time.”
Bustamante’s early years inclined him to his present research passion.
“I was a very ‘ADHD kid,’ ” he told Ocean State Stories. “I would kind of be bouncing off the walls and I found school very boring. Then I became pretty crazy about sports and basketball was my obsession. And I found that as I got more serious about basketball — the training, the sleep schedule, the diet — I became a much better student. And I pretty quickly became a better student than a basketball player. When I found in college that there could be a career in exercise psychology — the effect of exercise on brains, cognition and mental health — I was really fascinated to learn more.”
Educating future kinesiologists is an integral part of Logan’s teaching. Asked about her experiences with what is formally known as the PALACE Project (for Physical Activity, Language, ADHD, Children, Executive Function), URI doctoral student Michelle Lim told Ocean State Stories:
“Working in the lab with Dr. Logan has been one of the most formative and inspiring experiences of my academic journey. I’ve had the privilege of working with her since my undergraduate years, and she has consistently been a supportive, caring, and deeply insightful mentor. Her mentorship goes far beyond research – she genuinely invests in the personal and professional growth of her students. Dr Logan fosters a collaborative, interdisciplinary, and intellectually stimulating environment that encourages curiosity, critical thinking, and innovation.
“The PALACE project has had a profound impact on me both personally and professionally. Investigating ADHD through a multidimensional lens – integrating cognitive, psychological, and physiological metrics – has deepened my understanding of the complexity of neurodevelopmental disorders in children and adolescents. Personally, it has deepened my empathy and awareness of the daily challenges faced by individuals with ADHD. I’ve come to appreciate how physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep interact to influence cognitive function, mental health, and body composition.”
Lim’s PhD candidate colleague Janis Gaudreau said “over the past two years with Dr. Logan, I have learned endless career and life skills that will continue to benefit me in years to come. PALACE has impacted me by widely expanding my skills in human subject research, particularly patience, communication (with both participants and colleagues), and leadership. I’ve been fortunate enough to be a lead graduate research assistant on this large, data driven project. Each child that participates in the PALACE project has taught me something new or aided in the expansion of my knowledge of this population. Coming from a background in clinical research with adults, it’s been truly remarkable to watch the growth of developing minds. Every interaction is a reminder of how dynamic and insightful working with children can be.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “children and adolescents (age 6-17) need at least 60 minutes of physical activity every day.”
The CDC’s guidelines, Logan said, “specify that you don’t have to do it all at once. And so it doesn’t have to be 60 minutes after school for soccer practice. Something we’re really interested in promoting is as much physical activity as often and as frequently as you can. One thing that might really benefit children with ADHD is adding those bouts more frequently throughout the day, especially throughout the school day. I always recommend to parents that perhaps they start with family yoga in the morning and a walk to school or a bike ride to school. And then it’s getting outside and being active frequently throughout the school day.”
During the winter, she recommends “being active inside the classroom or wherever you can. It doesn’t have to be structured. It doesn’t have to be a game or a sport. It can be going for a walk. It can be climbing the stairs. It can be any type of movement — a few jumping jacks in the classroom at the end of a lesson, for example.”
Given social, economic and geographical disparities across America, Logan said she understands that not all children “have the option to participate in after-school sports, which have so many benefits. Not every family and not every child grows up with those opportunities and so if we really think about centering it around the school day and the family time to meet the recommendations of 60 minutes, that would really improve health outcomes. Anything from sports would be an added bonus.”
In order to broaden the research, Logan said her team is seeking new participants.
“If your child is interested in participating in the PALACE study at URI,” she said, “please email Dr. Nicole Logan at logan-group@uri.edu for more information.”
Copyright © 2025 Salve Regina University. Originally published by OceanStateStories.org.
