Fat cell-secreted adiponectin mediates physical exercise-induced hippocampal neurogenesis: an alternative anti-depressive treatment?

Adult neurogenesis is the formation of new neurons in the adult brain. This process takes location in two spots of the brain, which are the hippocampus and the olfactory bulbs. Adult neurogenesis is an important process because increased neurogenesis is related to an improvement in cognition, learning and memory. Recently, studies have been done on what increases and decreases adult neurogenesis. Exercise has been a key component to these studies showing that there is an increase in adult neurogenesis with exercise.

Patients with depression have been shown to have a decrease in adult neurogenesis. One way to decrease depressive symptoms is to increase adult neurogenesis through exercise. Researchers say that this could be an alternative to anti-depressive treatments.

In this particular article, the researchers were examining the component of adiponectin in adult neurogenesis with its correlation to depression. Adiponectin is a protein that can encourage glucose use in skeletal muscles and decrease glucose production in the liver. This protein also increases hippocampal cell proliferation without disturbing the process of neural differentiation. In other words, it increases the amount of neurons being created without influencing their ultimate function. Exercise is so important to this process, because it increases adiponectin in the hippocampus, therefore increasing the amount of neurogenesis. All these new neurons help change the neural circuitry, which results in exercise having that antidepressant effect.

The discovery of the correlation between adiponectin, exercise, and depression is significant because it could provide alternatives to the current pharmacological or clinical ways we currently treat depression. Often current ways are either not helpful or cause unwanted side effects. With this new knowledge about adiponectin, it is possible to continue research and see if it would be beneficial to pharmacologically increase adiponectin levels. It also supports the idea to continue to encourage depressive patients to exercise in order to ease symptoms.

Link to the article:

http://www.nrronline.org/article.asp?issn=16735374;year=2015;volume=10;issue=1;spage=7;epage=9;aulast=Yau

Xu, A., So, K., Li, A., & Yau, S. (n.d.). Fat cell-secreted adiponectin mediates physical exercise-induced hippocampal neurogenesis: An alternative anti-depressive treatment? Neural Regen Res Neural Regeneration Research, 7-7.