Panaree Parnpiansil. Maternal exercise enhances BDNF mRNA expression in multiple brain regions in rat pup including learning and memory . Doctoral Degree(Neurosciences). Mahidol University. : Mahidol University, 2003.
Maternal exercise enhances BDNF mRNA expression in multiple brain regions in rat pup including learning and memory
Abstract:
Physical activities for a few days can increase brain derived
neurotrophic factor (BDNF) mRNA in rat hippocampus. To investigate the influence
of maternal exercise during pregnancy on rat pup hippocampal BDNF mRNA, we
studied its expression by semi-quantitative RT-PCR method after young pregnant rats
were exercised on a motor driven treadmill. Pups from exercised mothers had
significantly increased hippocampal BDNF mRNA expression compared to the control
rat pups at postnatal day 0 (p<0.001). In contrast, hippocampal BDNF mRNA
expression in pups of exercised mothers decreased significantly on postnatal day 28
(p<0.002).
Spatial learning of rat pups was examined by multiple T-maze
training for seven consecutive days between postnatal days 40-47. Pups from
exercised mothers showed significant increase in spatial learning ability as
demonstrated by significant decreases in total time from start to finish in the first four
days and significantly fewer total number of errors as compared to age-matched
control pups (p<0.05). Thus physical exercise during pregnancy can increase
hippocampal BDNF mRNA expression of postnatal pups with an improvement on
spatial learning in pups from exercised dam. Moreover, BDNF mRNA in the frontal
cortex and cerebellum in pups from exercised mothers show the same temporal
alteration pattern during postnatal development as BDNF mRNA in hippocampus.
Furthermore, the dendritic branches in apical and basal dendritic trees at each order in
pyramidal cells in the CA1 area of hippocampus in pups from exercised mothers at
postnatal day 28 increased significantly compared with control pups (p<0.05) using
Sholl analysis.