Circulating Insulin-Like Growth Factor I Mediates Effects of Exercise on the Brain

By E. Carro, Á. Núñez, S. Busiguina, I. Torres-Alemán. Journal of Neuroscience, 2000

753 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Physical exercise increases brain activity through mechanisms not yet known. We now report that in rats, running induces uptake of blood insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) by specific groups of neurons throughout the brain. Neurons accumulating IGF-I show increased spontaneous firing and a protracted increase in sensitivity to afferent stimulation. Furthermore, systemic injection of IGF-I mimicked the effects of exercise in the brain. Thus, brain uptake of IGF-I after either intracarotid injection or after exercise elicited the same pattern of neuronal accumulation of IGF-I, an identical widespread increase in neuronal c-Fos, and a similar stimulation of hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor. When uptake of IGF-I by brain cells was blocked, the exercise-induced increase on c-Fos expression was also blocked. We conclude that serum IGF-I mediates activational effects of exercise in the brain. Thus, stimulation of the uptake of blood-borne IGF-I by nerve cells may lead to novel neuroprotective strategies.

Subfields: Developmental Neuroscience, Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Physiology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f84bb8591990b9ccfc475609d1d4474aff91198e

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In Developmental Neuroscience

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Citations in the corpus

The role of neurotrophic factors in adult hippocampal neurogenesis, antidepressant treatments and animal models of depressive-like behavior (2007, background): “Peripherally expressed IGF-1 crosses the blood–brain barrier and therefore both circulating and endogenous IGF-1 influence neuronal function in the hippocampus (Reinhardt and Bondy, 1994; Carro et al., 2000; Pulford and Ishii, 2001).”
Adult neurogenesis and cellular brain repair with neural progenitors, precursors and stem cells (2006, background): “Blocking IGF-I activity in exercising animals reduces hippocampal neurogenesis (Carro et al. 2000), suggesting that IGF-I at least partially mediates the effects of exercise on neurogenesis (Trejo et al. 2001).”
Circulating Insulin-Like Growth Factor I Mediates the Protective Effects of Physical Exercise against Brain Insults of Different Etiology and Anatomy (2001, methodology): “Circulating IGF-I is necessary for exercise-induced neuroprotection We next determined whether circulating IGF-I mediates neuroprotective effects of physical exercise because it increases levels of IGF-I in the CSF and in the brain (Carro et al., 2000; Trejo et al., 2001).”
Effects of voluntary exercise on synaptic plasticity and gene expression in the dentate gyrus of adult male Sprague-Dawley rats in vivo. (2004, result): “These results are in accordance with work by other laboratories in rats (Carro et al., 2000; Trejo et al., 2001), and similar to our previous findings in mice (van Praag et al.”
The many faces of insulin-like peptide signalling in the brain (2012, background): “The very low expression of IGF1 mRNA and the wide expression of IGF receptors in the adult mammalian brain suggests that peripherally produced IGF1 also has a role in the adult brai”
Physiology and neurobiology of stress and adaptation: central role of the brain. (2007, background): “Circulating IGF-I is a key mediator of the ability of physical activity to increase neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampal formation (1, 48).”
Circulating Insulin-Like Growth Factor I Mediates Exercise-Induced Increases in the Number of New Neurons in the Adult Hippocampus (2001, methodology): “Because acute systemic administration of IGF-I mimics other effects of acute exercise on the brain such as increased expression of BDNF in the hippocampus and increased c-fos labeling throughout the brain (Carro et al., 2000), we suggest that circulating IGF-I is critically involved in the effects o”
Sex, stress and the hippocampus: allostasis, allostatic load and the aging process. (2002, background): “Such exercise increases the uptake of IGF-1 from the blood and activates c-fos expression in dentate gyrus and other brain regions in a manner that is mimicked by IGF-1 administration into the circulation [21].”