Exercise during the inactive period can entrain locomotor activity and peripheral circadian clock rhythm in mice; however, mechanisms underlying this entrainment are yet to be elucidated. Here, we showed that the bioluminescence rhythm of peripheral clocks in PER2::LUC mice was strongly entrained by forced treadmill and forced wheel-running exercise rather than by voluntary wheel-running exerci...

An animal model was developed to study effects on components of exercise physiology of both "nature" (10 generations of genetic selection for high voluntary activity on running wheels) and "nurture" (7-8 wk of access or no access to running wheels, beginning at weaning). At the end of the experiment, mice from both wheel-access groups were significantly lighter in body mass than mice from seden...

Accumulating in vivo and ex vivo evidences show that humans suffering from depression have decreased hippocampal volume and altered spine density. Moreover, physical activity has an antidepressant effect in humans and in animal models, but to what extent physical activity can affect hippocampal volume and spine numbers in a model for depression is not known. In this study we analyzed whether ph...

Selective breeding is an important tool in behavioral genetics and evolutionary physiology, but it has rarely been applied to the study of exercise physiology. We are using artificial selection for increased wheel-running behavior to study the correlated evolution of locomotor activity and physiological determinants of exercise capacity in house mice. We studied enzyme activities and their resp...

We investigated the effects of genetic selection and prolonged wheel access (8 wk) on food consumption and body composition in lines of rats selected for high and low intrinsic (untrained) endurance running capacity (HCR and LCR, respectively) to test the generality of phenotypic correlations between physical activity levels, aerobic capacity, and body composition. HCR rats ran more minutes per...