Effect Of Aerobic Exercise On The Learning And Memorizing Abilities And Hippocampal Psd-95 In Depressive Rats

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

PURPOSE: 4 weeks of CUMS (Chronic Unpredictable Mild Stress) was to build depressive rats and investigate the effect of an aerobic exercise intervention on hippocampal PSD-95 (postsynaptic density-95) expression and spatial learning and memorizing ability. METHODS: 30 male SD rats randomly divided into 3 groups: the Control group (C), the Model group (M), and the Exercise group (E). M and E were subjected to CUMS stimulation and/or aerobic exercise for 4 weeks respectively. E received swimming training for 4 weeks (60 min/day, 6 days/week). OFT was used to test CUMS related anxiety-like behavior in order to detect the success of model. MWM was performed to evaluate their spatial learning and memorizing ability. The expression of PSD-95 was tested by RT-PCR and WB. The experimental data was reported as mean ± SE. A statistical significant level was defined when P < 0.05. RESULTS: 1) OFT: CUMS can decrease the central zone duration and exercise alleviates anxiety-like behavior (C:16.02 ± 7.96; M:8.3 ± 1.25; E:22.61 ± 10.7, P < 0.05); 2)MWM detection: during 6 days of the navigation experiment, M showed more difficulty to find the platform compared with C and E(P < 0.05), while there was no significant difference between C and E (P > 0.05); During the space exploring experiment, M spent much time to find the platform compared with C and E (C:3.14 ± 0.38; M:1.57 ± 0.79; E:2.57 ± 0.53, P < 0.05); 3) mRNA and protein detection: compared with C, the mRNA(C:1.29 ± 0.39; M:0.56 ± 0.19; E:1.21 ± 0.11) and protein level of PSD-95 (C:0.99 ± 0.05; M:0.77 ± 0.05; E:1.19 ± 0.09) significantly decreased in group M, while increased in group E(P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: 4 weeks of aerobic exercise intervention effectively reverses the depression symptoms and improves their spatial learning and memorizing ability in rats pretreated by CUMS stimulation. In addition, aerobic exercise can rescue and significantly up-regulate the expression of PSD-95 in hippocampus which suppressed by CUMS stimulation. In summary, this study demonstrated the improvement of CUMS-associated learning and memorizing ability by exercise via enhanced expression of PSD-95 in hippocampus.