Exercise Prompts Brain Growth

Yes, SportsGeezer readers knew that exercise preserves the white matter in our brains, and we assume that that’s a good thing, but now comes research showing that exercise actually prompts brain cells to grow–at least in mice. Gretchen Reynolds reports in the New York Times that researchers at the University of South Carolina studied two groups of mice; one that ran on a treadmill for an hour a day, and one that lounged around the mouse cage. After two months, the mice were persuaded to run to exhaustion, an exercise that took the treadmill mice 126 minutes, while the lounge group lasted only 74 minutes. Next, the researchers examined the mouse brains. In the mice that exercised, they found markers of upwelling mitochondrial development in all of the tissues. In fact, in the brain of every mouse that had run on the treadmill, cells held newborn mitochondria. In the loungers, Reynolds reports, “There was no comparable activity in brain cells.” Excellent news, for mice, but what about humans? Reynolds quotes J. Mark Davis, a professor of exercise science at the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina and senior author of the new mouse study, asserting that other studies suggest that mitochondrial deficits in the brain may play a role in the development of neurodegenerative diseases. And Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky, a professor of medicine at McMaster Children’s Hospital, tells Reynolds that epidemiological studies show that long-term runners have a lower risk of neurological disease.

Read more from Gretchen Reynolds.