Abstract
Here we study the effect of acute and chronic physical exercise in a treadmill and of daily stress (because forced exercise involves a degree of stress) during 2 or 8 weeks on different types of memory in male Wistar rats. The memory tests employed were: habituation in an open field, object recognition and spatial learning in the Morris water maze. Daily foot-shock stress enhanced habituation learning after 2 but not after 8 weeks; it hindered both short- (STM) and long-term memory (LTM) of the recognition task at 2 weeks but only STM after 8 weeks and had no effect on spatial learning after either 2 or 8 weeks. Acute but not chronic exercise also enhanced habituation in the open field and hindered STM and LTM in the recognition task. Chronic exercise enhanced one important measure of spatial learning (latency to escape) but not others. Our findings indicate that some care must be taken when interpreting effects of forced exercise on brain parameters since at least part of them may be due to the stress inherent to the training procedure.
Highlights
The functional benefits of physical exercise on brain function have been studied in humans (Winter et al 2007, Arkin 2007, Abbot et al 2004) and in laboratory animals, especially rodents
Few authors have studied, animals submitted for similar periods to other forms of stress besides that provided by physical exercise
One hundred and twelve male Wistar rats purchased at Centro de Reprodução e Experimentação Animal (CREAL) from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) were used
Summary
The functional benefits of physical exercise on brain function have been studied in humans (Winter et al 2007, Arkin 2007, Abbot et al 2004) and in laboratory animals, especially rodents. Van Praag et al 2005) but few investigated the effects of forced exercise (see Ang et al 2006, Radak et al 2006). The latter, which is much used by humans (eg., Winter et al 2007), probably involves a degree of stress (Cotman and Bertchtold 2002, Ang et al 2006, Blustein et al 2006, Winter et al 2007), which is difficult to control. Few authors have studied, animals submitted for similar periods to other forms of stress besides that provided by physical exercise
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