Exercising the brain: a behavioural, electrophysiological and immunohistochemical analysis of the effects of exercise in the brain

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It is becoming increasingly apparent that both physical and mental exercise can have a number of benefits for our brains; positively impacting cognitive processing in both animals and humans. One area of the brain where these benefits are most apparent morphologically, as well as functionally, is the dentate gyrus of the hippocampal formation, a structure known to be involved in learning and memory. We have recently shown that exercise can promote both cellular proliferation and neurogenesis in the adult dentate gyrus, increasing the turnover of cells in this region long after most brain development has ceased. In addition, exercise also has benefits for existing neurons, increasing both the length and complexity of their dendrites, as well as the number of synapses available for establishing inter-neuronal communication. Functionally, the hippocampus of animals that exercise is capable of exhibiting more long-term potentiation (LTP) of synaptic efficacy. This the main cellular model for how learning and memory processes could occur in the mammalian brain, and along with it's counterpart, long-term depression (LTD), provide a mechanism for neurons to alter the way that they communicate with one another. It is believed that such alterations are necessary to establish the changes in neuronal signaling that are thought to occur with learning. Thus far, the evidence indicates that exercise makes for a more dynamic hippocampus, while animals that do not engage in exercise have a hippocampus that is both morphologically and functionally more restricted and static.