Cognitive, Behavioral, and Systems NeuroscienceResearch PaperPhysical exercise during adolescence versus adulthood: differential effects on object recognition memory and brain-derived neurotrophic factor levels
Highlights
▶Physical exercise during adolescence had more durable effects on object memory and BDNF levels than exercise during adulthood. ▶Exercise during adolescence versus adulthood differentially affected BDNF levels in perirhinal cortex and hippocampus. ▶The data reveal a novel interaction between exercise, development, and medial temporal lobe memory systems involved in familiarity and recollection.
Section snippets
Experiment 1: exercise during adulthood
Experiment 1 was designed to replicate the finding that the effect of exercise on object recognition memory in adult male rats is transient (Hopkins and Bucci, 2010b). Recognition memory was tested immediately after 4 weeks of access to a running wheel and again 2 weeks after access to the running wheels was removed. The levels of BDNF protein in the PER and HP were measured at each time point 24 h after the memory test session.
Experiment 2: exercise during adolescence
The goal of Experiment 2 was to test whether a similar pattern of
Novel object recognition
As shown in Table 1, rats in the exercising and non-exercising groups exhibited comparable amounts of time exploring the objects during the sample session when tested immediately after the 4-week exercise period (P>0.8), as well as when they were tested with a new set of objects 2 weeks after exercise ended (P>0.3). Thus, exercise did not alter general exploratory behavior at either time point.
The discrimination ratios during the object recognition test sessions are illustrated in Fig. 1. When
Discussion
Experiment 1 replicated the finding that object recognition memory was enhanced in exercising rats versus non-exercisers immediately after a 4-week exercise regimen during adulthood, but not 2 weeks after the exercise regimen ended (Hopkins and Bucci, 2010b). Similarly, BDNF levels were increased in exercising rats compared to non-exercising rats immediately after exercise ended, consistent with prior research (Molteni et al., 2002, Adlard et al., 2004, Berchtold et al., 2005), but there were
Conclusion
Based on the present data and a growing literature focused on understanding how exercise-induced changes in neurobiology lead to cognitive improvement, we have put forth a model whereby physical exercise non-specifically primes cortical neuroplastic processes and pathways, effectively lowering the salience threshold for learning to occur in the brain region(s) that is/are engaged during a given experience. While this cognitive enhancement seems quite transient when exercise takes place during
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by NIH grant R01MH082893, a Dartmouth College Rockefeller Center Research Grant, and a Hodgson Undergraduate Research Award.
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These authors contributed equally to this study.