Running reorganizes the circuitry of one-week-old adult-born hippocampal neurons

How is your doctor and therapists accomplishing your running? So you can get the benefits of neurogenesis. I don't care that this is in mice, your doctor should have enough brains to be able to extrapolate this to humans.

Running reorganizes the circuitry of one-week-old adult-born hippocampal neurons

Sah N¹, Peterson BD¹, Lubejko ST¹, Vivar C², van Praag H³.

Author information

Abstract

Adult hippocampal neurogenesis is an important form of structural and functional plasticity in the mature mammalian brain. The existing consensus is that GABA regulates the initial integration of adult-born neurons, similar to neuronal development during embryogenesis. Surprisingly, virus-based anatomical tracing revealed that very young, one-week-old, new granule cells in male C57Bl/6 mice receive input not only from GABAergic interneurons, but also from multiple glutamatergic cell types, including mature dentate granule cells, area CA1-3 pyramidal cells and mossy cells. Consistently, patch-clamp recordings from retrovirally labeled new granule cells at 7-8 days post retroviral injection (dpi) show that these cells respond to NMDA application with tonic currents, and that both electrical and optogenetic stimulation can evoke NMDA-mediated synaptic responses. Furthermore, new dentate granule cell number, morphology and excitatory synaptic inputs at 7 dpi are modified by voluntary wheel running. Overall, glutamatergic and GABAergic innervation of newly born neurons in the adult hippocampus develops concurrently, and excitatory input is reorganized by exercise.

PMID:

28883658

PMCID:

PMC5589841

DOI:

10.1038/s41598-017-11268-z

Free PMC Article

Gretchen Reynolds points to work by van Praag and collaborators showing that a week of activity rather than inactivity (in adult male rats) increases both the formation of new nerve cells in the hippocampus and the richness of their interactions. The new cells had more and longer dendrites, more of which led to spatial memory areas.