Key Laboratory of CNS Regeneration (Ministry of Education), Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Institute of CNS Regeneration, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China.
State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Commun Biol. 2023 Jun 9;6(1):624. doi: 10.1038/s42003-023-05003-w.
Aerobic exercise effectively ameliorates mental disorders including anxiety and depression. Current findings mainly attribute its neural mechanism to the improvement of adult neurogenesis, while leaving the possible circuitry mechanism unclear. In the current study, we identify the overexcitation of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) to basolateral amygdala (BLA) pathway under chronic restraint stress (CRS), and 14-day treadmill exercise selectively reverses such abnormalities. Using chemogenetic approaches, we find that the mPFC-BLA circuit is necessary for preventing anxiety-like behaviors in CRS mice. These results collectively suggest a neural circuitry mechanism by which exercise training improves the resilience against environmental stress.
有氧运动能有效改善焦虑和抑郁等精神障碍。目前的研究结果主要将其神经机制归因于成年神经发生的改善，而不清楚其可能的回路机制。在本研究中，我们发现慢性束缚应激（CRS）下内侧前额叶皮层（mPFC）至外侧杏仁核（BLA）通路的过度兴奋，而 14 天的跑步机运动则选择性地逆转了这种异常。通过化学遗传学方法，我们发现 mPFC-BLA 回路对于预防 CRS 小鼠的焦虑样行为是必要的。这些结果共同提示了运动训练改善对环境应激抵抗力的神经回路机制。
