Physical Exercise Enhances Cognitive Flexibility as Well as Astrocytic and Synaptic Markers in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex
Physical Exercise Enhances Cognitive Flexibility as Well as Astrocytic and Synaptic Markers in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex
复制标题
DOI：
10.1371/journal.pone.0124859
复制
发表时间：
2015-05-04
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Gould, Elizabeth
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Brockett, Adam T.;LaMarca, Elizabeth A.;Gould, Elizabeth
体育锻炼能增强人类广泛的认知功能。在啮齿动物中也已证明跑步可促进认知能力提升，但主要强调的是那些需要海马体参与的任务。此外，旨在确定体育锻炼促进认知提升机制的研究一直聚焦于跑步引起的神经元变化，而很少关注星形胶质细胞的此类变化。为了进一步了解大脑如何随着体育锻炼而发生变化，我们研究了跑步是否会改变需要前额叶皮质参与的认知任务的表现，以及任何此类变化是否与星形胶质细胞以及神经元的可塑性相关。我们发现跑步可提高已知依赖前额叶皮质的认知任务的表现。相比之下，我们发现对于已知依赖鼻周皮质的认知任务没有这种改善。此外，我们发现跑步可增强参与认知的几个大脑区域的突触、树突和星形胶质细胞指标，但后一种指标的变化更特定于与认知改善相关的大脑区域。这些发现表明，体育锻炼会诱导神经元和非神经元成分广泛的可塑性，并且这两种类型的变化可能都与跑步引起的认知提升有关。
Physical exercise enhances a wide range of cognitive functions in humans. Running-induced cognitive enhancement has also been demonstrated in rodents but with a strong emphasis on tasks that require the hippocampus. Additionally, studies designed to identify mechanisms that underlie cognitive enhancement with physical exercise have focused on running-induced changes in neurons with little attention paid to such changes in astrocytes. To further our understanding of how the brain changes with physical exercise, we investigated whether running alters performance on cognitive tasks that require the prefrontal cortex and whether any such changes are associated with astrocytic, as well as neuronal, plasticity. We found that running enhances performance on cognitive tasks known to rely on the prefrontal cortex. By contrast, we found no such improvement on a cognitive task known to rely on the perirhinal cortex. Moreover, we found that running enhances synaptic, dendritic and astrocytic measures in several brain regions involved in cognition but that changes in the latter measures were more specific to brain regions associated with cognitive improvements. These findings suggest that physical exercise induces widespread plasticity in both neuronal and nonneuronal elements and that both types of changes may be involved in running-induced cognitive enhancement.