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Exercise has long been known to combats stress, but a study by Brigham Young University suggests that it can also combat forgetfulness. The researchers found that running protects against the negative effects of stress on the hippocampus-the part of the brain responsible for learning and memory.
Within the hippocampus, memory formation and recall work best when the connections between neurons-synapses, are strengthened over time, a process called long-term potentiation (LTP). Chronic or prolonged stress, however, weakens the synapses and with them the LTP, negatively impacting memory.
The ideal situation for improving learning and memory would be to experience no stress and to exercise. To study the link between memory, stress and exercise, researchers divided mice into four groups: sedentary no stress, exercise no stress, exercise with stress, and sedentary with stress. The mice were then exposed to stress inducing situations, such as walking on an elevated platform or swimming in cold water, or put on a running wheel depending on their grouping.
To determine how the variables affected each group’s memory, the researchers used electrophysiology to measure the LTP in the animals’ brains. They found that the stressed mice who exercised had considerable higher LTP rates than those who had not exercised. The researchers also used a maze-running experiment to test the mice’s memories. The stressed mice who exercised performed just as well as non-stressed mice who exercised.
Additionally, the exercising mice made significantly fewer memory errors in the maze than the sedentary mice. The findings suggest exercise is an effective way to protect learning and memory mechanisms from the negative cognitive impacts of chronic stress on the brain.
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