Running therapy improves clinical symptoms but not functional network connectivity in individuals with affective...

Running therapy has been shown to be efficacious for depression and anxiety disorders. However, little is known about the effects of running therapy on functional brain connectivity.

We used resting-state functional MRI scans from 25 individuals with an affective disorder that performed 16 weeks running therapy as part of the MOod Treatment with Antidepressants or Running (MOTAR) study. Using an atlas-based approach we investigated therapy-induced changes in connectivity and topology of several functional systems, e.g. the default-mode and salience networks. We additionally performed a case-control analysis using the pre-treatment scans of affective disorder patients (N = 50) and matched healthy controls (N = 66).

Running therapy significantly improved depressive (Inventory of Depressive Symptoms; IDS) and anxiety (Beck's Anxiety Inventory; BAI) symptoms after 16 weeks (IDS: Z = -4.13, P < 0.001, BAI: Z = -2.87, P = 0.003), but it had no significant effect on functional connectivity or network topology. The case-control analyses at baseline also did not reveal any between-group differences.

We conclude that there were either no functional abnormalities to improve or the effects of 16 weeks running therapy may be too subtle to impact (global) network communication of functional systems and may be limited to changes in localized brain regions. Discrepancies between our case-control results and that of previous literature are interpreted in light of methodological and clinical heterogeneity.