Voluntary exercise regionally augments rates of cerebral protein synthesis

Exercise is a natural form of neurophysiologic stimulation that has known benefits for mental health, maintenance of cerebral function, and stress reduction. Exercise is known to induce an upregulation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and this is thought to be involved in associated increases in neural plasticity. Protein synthesis is also an essential component of adaptive plasticity. We hypothesized that exercise may stimulate changes in brain protein synthesis as part of its effects on plasticity. Here, we applied the quantitative autoradiographic L-[1-(14)C]leucine method to the in vivo determination of regional rates of cerebral protein synthesis (rCPS) in adult rats following a seven day period of voluntary wheel-running and their sedentary counterparts. In four of 21 brain regions examined, the mean values of rCPS in the exercised rats were statistically significantly higher than in sedentary controls; regions affected were paraventricular hypothalamic nucleus, ventral hippocampus as a whole, CA1 pyramidal cell layer in ventral hippocampus, and frontal cortex. Increases in rCPS approached statistical significance in dentate gyrus of the ventral hippocampus. Our results affirm the value of exercise in encouraging hippocampal and possibly cortical neuroplasticity, and also suggest that exercise may modulate stimulation of stress-response pathways. Ultimately, our study indicates that measurement of rCPS with PET might be used as a marker of brain response to exercise in human subjects.