Origins of Exercise-Brain Interactions

It is now established that incorporating regular exercise into the life routine is crucial for maintaining cognitive health throughout the lifespan, however the mechanisms for the pro-cognitive effects of exercise are not well understood.  Elucidating and unequivocally establishing these mechanisms holds the key to discover novel and more efficient ways to maintain, promote and improve cognitive performance, perhaps even in the absence of physical activity.  We and many others, have documented numerous long-term changes in the central nervous system (CNS) from exercise training which likely support enhanced cognition. However, the acute effects of exercise which ultimately must cause the long-term CNS adaptations are not known.  Moreover, it is not clear where the acute signals come from, the periphery (e.g., muscles, blood pressure) or within the brain itself.  We believe it is crucial to identify those specific acute events associated with exercise or physical exertion that when repeated contribute to the chronic neurological changes that have been so well documented and presumably related to the cognitive enhancement.  This is because if we seek to replicate exercise’s pro-cognitive influence, then it likely will be necessary to recapitulate the acute events and repeat them to cause the desired long-term cognitive benefits, as occurs with exercise training.

We are currently working with a team of scientists from kinesiology, psychology, behavioral neuroscience, chemical engineering, and biochemistry backgrounds.  In one line of this research we are testing the hypothesis that the effects of exercise on enhanced survival and differentiation of new neurons in the hippocampus is due to contraction of the peripheral muscles engaged during the physical activity.  Another line is testing the hypothesis that the origin of exercise-induced neurogenesis comes from the repeated acute activation of the dentate gyrus that occurs during high-intensity movements.