Nature: The more you exercise, the smarter you are! Mice lying flat grow more brain cells

Coffee in the left hand and "happy water" in the right hand, you who sit for a long time at work and lie down like Ge You after get off work, have you felt that your brain is not working well recently? It seems that your memory is also declining?

Be more confident and remove the "seems".

Because the latest research reveals that if you don't exercise for a long time, your brain may actually deteriorate.

Recently, a research team from Stanford School of Medicine found that there may be an "anti-inflammatory factor" in plasma that is beneficial to the brain. Through exercise, the level of these anti-inflammatory factors will be significantly increased. If these anti-inflammatory factors are injected into the body of non-exercising mice, they can even improve their learning ability and memory.

In addition, they also found that patients with cognitive impairment had increased levels of anti-inflammatory factors in their bodies after six months of exercise.

The related research paper, titled "Exercise plasma boosts memory and dampens brain inflammation via clusterin", has been published in the top scientific journal Nature.

(Source: Nature)

The research team also mentioned in the paper that the results of this study pointed out a new direction for developing treatments for Alzheimer's disease and similar diseases.

Want to improve your memory? Just move.

"Exercise is good for health" is probably a truth recognized by the world. Whether it is humans or animals, proper exercise can often improve various aspects of physical quality, such as delaying cognitive aging and neurodegeneration. However, people still know very little about the underlying factors and mechanisms by which exercise achieves these functions.

In order to clarify these issues at the molecular level, the researchers conducted a series of mouse experiments. First, they divided male mice into an experimental group and a control group. The former were placed in a cage with a roller to act as a "treadmill" to promote mouse exercise, while the control group mice were sedentary. Over the next 28 days, exercise mouse plasma (RP) and control mouse plasma (CP) were injected into the recipient mice every 3 days to observe whether there were any differences in their plasma characteristics.

The results showed that the overall cell survival rate of mice injected with RP increased, while there was no significant change in mice injected with CP. Compared with CP control mice, the number of total proliferating cells, neuroblasts and surviving cells in the plasma of mice receiving RP increased significantly. It is worth noting that these characteristics are consistent with the changes in the plasma of the exercise mice themselves.

In addition, the researchers conducted a test on both types of mice for spatial learning and memory and found that injection of RP improved the mice's contextual learning and memory, consistent with its effects on neurogenesis.

Figure | Differences between recipient mice receiving RP and CP in the Morris water maze test. The time taken by mice to find the platform and get out of the water was compared (left); the time, frequency, and latency of the two groups of mice interacting with the virtual platform (right).

Exercise more to protect your brain

Previous studies have confirmed that the improvement of brain cognition through exercise is related to increased plasticity of the hippocampus and reduced inflammation.

Therefore, the researchers hypothesized that people who exercise regularly may have an "exercise anti-inflammatory factor" in their bodies that can protect the brain and reduce inflammation in the hippocampus.

They first injected RP into mice with neurodegenerative disease-related neuroinflammation and then observed whether it could reduce neuroinflammation. By detecting the expression of related genes, they found that RP can indeed effectively counteract the neuroinflammatory response in the hippocampus.

This further confirms the researchers' hypothesis.

To determine the anti-inflammatory components of RP plasma, they immuno-eliminated the four most important differentially expressed proteins in RP: cluster protein CLU, FH protein, glycoprotein pigment epithelium-derived factor PEDF, and leukemia inhibitory factor receptor LIFR. All mice developed hippocampal inflammation, and the control group mice were injected with intact RP systemically, while the experimental group mice were divided into four groups and injected with RP plasma lacking CLU, FH, PEDF, and LIFR. Eight hours later, the hippocampus of the mice was analyzed using DNA sequencing methods for immune and inflammatory gene expression.

Finally, the researchers found the "anti-inflammatory factor": RP without CLU protein almost lost its anti-inflammatory properties, while the other three proteins had almost no effect. After using dyes to mark different types of CLU proteins, the researchers further locked in the main role of recombinant clusterin (rCLU) in anti-inflammatory effects.

Figure | Changes in various proteins in the subjects' plasma before and after exercise, gray triangles are before exercise, blue circles are after exercise (Source: Paper)

To determine whether these experimental results are also useful for humans, they also conducted experiments on 20 veterans with amnestic mild cognitive impairment. After 6 months of exercise, they found that CLU increased significantly and proteins related to hippocampal inflammation decreased significantly in the exercising patients.

Therefore, the discovery of "anti-inflammatory factors" in this study is very likely to be applied to the human body, and may even bring new hope to the treatment of patients with Alzheimer's disease and other diseases.

Running for 10 minutes can benefit your whole body and mind

Coincidentally, an article published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports at the end of last month also revealed the importance of exercise. A research team from the University of Tsukuba found that we don’t need to exercise very hard every day. Just running for 10 minutes is beneficial to our mental health.

(Source: Scientific Reports)

Although previous studies have shown that physical exercise can improve our mood, those studies usually used cycling as a form of exercise. Through this experiment, the researchers wanted to study the effects of running on the brain area that controls emotions and performs various functions.

"Given the degree of control required to coordinate balance, movement, and propulsion during running, it is logical that neuronal activation in the prefrontal cortex would increase, and that other functions in this area would benefit from this increase in brain resources," explains corresponding author Professor Hideaki Soya.

To test their hypothesis, the researchers asked the subjects to run for 10 minutes, then used the Stroop Color-Word Test to observe their emotional state and obtain data on hemodynamic changes associated with brain activity while the participants performed each task. For example, to write the word red in green, the participants had to say the color instead of reading the word. At this point, the brain must process two sets of information at the same time and suppress irrelevant information.

Figure | Results of the color-word test for the control group and the experimental group. Reaction time, error rate, Stroop interference state, and comparison of the two groups before and after running (Source: Paper)

The results showed that after 10 minutes of moderate-intensity running, the duration of the Stroop interference effect was significantly reduced.

In addition, the subjects' bilateral prefrontal cortex was significantly activated during the color-word test task. After running, the participants also reported that their mood became better.

The researchers said that given that many features of the prefrontal cortex are unique to humans, this study not only illustrates the benefits of "running for ten minutes, benefiting the whole body and mind", but also suggests that exercise may play a more profound role in human evolutionary history.

After hearing so much, why not take action?

References:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04183-x

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-01654-z

Written by: Wu Tingting

Editor: Kou Jianchao

Layout: Li Xuewei

Source: Academic Headlines