Role of physical activity, sedentary behavior and physical fitness in mental health and white matter in children and adolescents Rodríguez García, María Ortega Porcel, Francisco Bartolomé Esteban Cornejo, Irene Universidad de Granada. Programa de Doctorado en: Biomedicina Neurociencia Childhood and adolescence are periods of dynamic behavioral, cognitive and emotional development that can increase vulnerability to mental disorders. Obesity and related issues represent important public health concerns in terms of prevalence, incidence and economic burden. In addition, nearly 75% of young people have insufficient levels of physical activity in developed countries. In tandem with this fact, most of the young people are “digital natives”, which means that they have grown up surrounded by digital information and entertainment on screens. All these facts together prove that a major change in the lifestyle of young people is taking place in the last decades, which in turn might have an effect on their mental and brain health. In this context, white matter, which is important for efficient transmission of information between brain areas, has been considered one of the brain features susceptible of being modified by physical activity and other related factors (i.e., sedentary behavior and physical fitness) in young people, yet the body of evidence is still in its infancy, and further studies are needed to shed light on the many questions that remain unanswered. Therefore, the overall aim of the present International Doctoral Thesis is to study the role of physical activity, sedentary behavior and physical fitness in the mental health (part I), and white matter (part II) in young people. 2020-03-03T09:17:55Z 2020-03-03T09:17:55Z 2020 2020-02-07 info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis Rodríguez García, M. Role of physical activity, sedentary behavior and physical fitness in mental health and white matter in children and adolescents. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2020. [http://hdl.handle.net/10481/59950] 9788413064574 http://hdl.handle.net/10481/59950 spa http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 España Universidad de Granada