Mice who exercise are shown to learn faster than sedantary ones
The first solid link between neurogenesis and learning came from one of Gage’s colleagues, Henrietta van Praag. They used a rodent-size pool filled with opaque water to hide a platform just beneath the surface in one quadrant. Mice don’t like water, so the experiment was designed to test how well they remember, from an earlier dip, the location of the platform — their escape route. When comparing inactive mice with others that hit the running wheel four to five kilometers a night, the results showed that the runners remembered where to find safety more quickly. Both groups swam at the same rate, but the exercised animals made a beeline for the platform, while the sedentary ones floundered about before figuring it out. When the mice were dissected, the active mice had twice as many new stem cells in the hippocampus as the inactive ones. Speaking generally about what they found, Gage says: “There is a significant correlation between the total number of cells and [a mouse’s] ability to perform a complex task. And if you block neurogenesis, mice can’t recall information.”
References
- Haley, J., John. Hagerman, Eric. (2008). Spark Chapter 2. Learning (p. 60) New York, NY: Little Brown Spark.
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Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience Status:☀️