The evolutionary importance of postnatal ontogenies has long been recognized, but most studies of ontogenetic trajectories have focused exclusively on morphological traits. For animals, this represents a major omission because behavioral traits and their ontogenies often have relatively direct relationships to fitness. Here four replicate lines of house mice artificially selected for high early...

objective(s): the effect of maternal voluntary exercise on hippocampal bdnf level in rat offspring was studied. in addition, the possible role of hippocampal bdnf receptors in maternal exercise induced enhancement of learning in the rat pups was investigated.   materials and methods: pregnant rats have been randomly assigned to sedentary control or voluntary exercise groups. each of the exercis...

Adaptations of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis to voluntary exercise in rodents are not clear, because most investigations use forced-exercise protocols, which are associated with psychological stress. In the present study, we examined the effects of voluntary wheel running on the circadian corticosterone (Cort) rhythm as well as HPA axis responsiveness to, and recovery from, rest...

Declines in skeletal muscle size and strength, often seen with chronic wasting diseases, prolonged or high-dose glucocorticoid therapy, and the natural aging process in mammals, are usually associated with reduced physical activity and testosterone levels. However, it is not clear whether the decline in testosterone and activity are causally related. Using a mouse model, we found that removal o...

It has been suspected that in comparison with glucose or fatty acids, the levels of amino acids may readily change with different forms of exercise. In the present study, we measured the concentrations of amino acids, glucose, triglycerides, total protein and total cholesterol in the blood and/or cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of rats subjected to forced running exercise on a treadmill, and voluntar...

Chronic alcohol intake is associated with widespread disruptions in sleep and circadian rhythms in both human alcoholics and in experimental animals. Recent studies have demonstrated that chronic and acute ethanol treatments alter fundamental properties of the circadian pacemaker--including free-running period and responsiveness to photic and nonphotic phase-shifting stimuli--in rats and hamste...

PURPOSE Our previous investigations showed that involuntary treadmill exercise is neuroprotective in a light-induced retinal degeneration mouse model, and it may act through activation of tropomyosin-related kinase B (TrkB) receptors. This study investigated whether voluntary running wheel exercise can be neuroprotective in an inheritable model of the retinal degenerative disease retinitis pigm...

Locomotion is central to behavior and intrinsic to many fitness-critical activities (e.g., migration, foraging), and it competes with other life-history components for energy. However, detailed analyses of how changes in locomotor activity and running behavior affect energy budgets are scarce. We quantified these effects in four replicate lines of house mice that have been selectively bred for ...

In two separate experiments, voluntary resistance wheel running with 30% of body weight (RWR), rather than wheel running (WR), led to greater enhancements, including adult hippocampal neurogenesis and cognitive functions, in conjunction with hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) signaling (Lee et al., J Appl Physiol, 2012; Neurosci Lett., 2013). Here we aimed to unravel novel mol...