Exercise has been shown to raise levels of BDNF
Carl Cotman, Director of the Institute for Brain Aging and Dementia at the University of California, Irvine, set up an experiment to measure the levels of BDNF in the brains of mice that exercise. It was important that the exercise be voluntary because if he forced the mice to run on treadmills, he feared his peers might say the effect was from the stress of being handled. No problem: he’d use running wheels.
Unlike humans, rodents seem to inherently enjoy physical activity, and Cotman’s mice ran several kilometers a night. They were divided into four groups: mice running for two, four, or seven nights, and one control group with no running wheel. When their brains were injected with a molecule that binds to BDNF and scanned, not only did the scans of the running rodents show an increase in BDNF over controls, but the farther each mouse ran, the higher the levels were. The levels of BDNF were esspecially raised in the hippocampus, which is signifigant considering that Elevated levels of cortisol can shrink the hippocampus.
References
- Haley, J., John. Hagerman, Eric. (2008). Spark Chapter 2. Learning (p. 52). New York, NY: Little Brown Spark.
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Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience Status:☀️