Hippocampal plasticity in response to exercise in schizophrenia.
By F. Pajonk, T. Wobrock, O. Gruber, H. Scherk, D. Berner, I. Kaizl, A. Kierer, S. Müller, M. Oest, T. Meyer and 5 more. Archives of General Psychiatry, 2010
594 citations recorded by the source corpus.
CONTEXT Hippocampal volume is lower than expected in patients with schizophrenia; however, whether this represents a fixed deficit is uncertain. Exercise is a stimulus to hippocampal plasticity. OBJECTIVE To determine whether hippocampal volume would increase with exercise in humans and whether this effect would be related to improved aerobic fitness. DESIGN Randomized controlled study. SETTING Patients attending a day hospital program or an outpatient clinic. PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS Male patients with chronic schizophrenia and matched healthy subjects. INTERVENTIONS Aerobic exercise training (cycling) and playing table football (control group) for a period of 3 months. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Magnetic resonance imaging of the hippocampus. Secondary outcome measures were magnetic resonance spectroscopy, neuropsychological (Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, Corsi block-tapping test), and clinical (Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale) features. RESULTS Following exercise training, relative hippocampal volume increased significantly in patients (12%) and healthy subjects (16%), with no change in the nonexercise group of patients (-1%). Changes in hippocampal volume in the exercise group were correlated with improvements in aerobic fitness measured by change in maximum oxygen consumption (r = 0.71; P = .003). In the schizophrenia exercise group (but not the controls), change in hippocampal volume was associated with a 35% increase in the N-acetylaspartate to creatine ratio in the hippocampus. Finally, improvement in test scores for short-term memory in the combined exercise and nonexercise schizophrenia group was correlated with change in hippocampal volume (r = 0.51; P < .05). CONCLUSION These results indicate that in both healthy subjects and patients with schizophrenia hippocampal volume is plastic in response to aerobic exercise.
Subfields: Neurology, Psychiatry and Mental health
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3f2d0ee5224ae28032f978ac40a49c24773574f7
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Citations in the corpus
- Muscles and their myokines (2011, background): “This has been demonstrated especially in the hippocampus, where exercise-induced increases in cerebral blood volume (CBV) have been shown to be associated with neurogenesis and vascularisation (Pajonk et al., 2010; Pereira et al., 2007).”
- Exercise as medicine – evidence for prescribing exercise as therapy in 26 different chronic diseases (2015, methodology): “A 2010 study shows that aerobic exercise over a 3- month period led to an increase in the size of the hippocampus and an improvement in the short-term memory of people with schizophrenia (Pajonk et al., 2010).”
- Harnessing neuroplasticity for clinical applications (2011, unknown): “…ageing and early dementia, may be of benefit in schizophrenia (Colcombe et al., 2004; Kramer and Erickson, 2007), and have been shown to increase brain volume in a variety of regions (Colcombe et al., 2006; Pajonk et al., 2010) and to enhance brain network functioning (Colcombe et al., 2004).”
- The Influence of Exercise on Cognitive Abilities (2013, unknown): “and schizophrenia (132).”
- Muscle–Organ Crosstalk: The Emerging Roles of Myokines (2020, background): “Studies in humans show that BDNF is released from the brain during a bout of bicycle exercise (95, 96), and aerobic exercise training for 3 months increases the volume of the hippocampus in healthy individuals by 12% and by 16% in patients with schizophrenia (97).”