Intergenerational transmission of the positive effects of physical exercise on brain and cognition

Parental moderate exercise induces positive effects on sedentary litter's behavior, and on hippocampal gene expression, adult neurogenesis and mitochondrial activation Overall design: A first set of animals was assigned to 2 groups: 'Sedentary fathers' or 'Exercised fathers'. Animals from this second group were put into a physical activity program (40 mins of treadmill activity every day for 6 weeks) while the sedentary group was kept without access to treadmill or any physical activity. After 6 weeks, the performance of both groups was tested in different hippocampal-dependent tasks to collect behavioural data. Then they were all put into breed to obtain a second generation. The fathers were killed at 7 months and their hippocampus collected for RNA Sequencing. Then we tested the offspring of this first set of animals. We had two groups in this second generation: 'litters from sedentary fathers' and 'litters from exercised fathers'. We tested the litters in the same hippocampal-dependant tasks than fathers to collect behavioural data. Then were killed at 5.5 months and their hippocampus collected for RNA Sequencing. The two main goals of RNA Sequencing were: 1) to compare the levels of gene expression in hippocampus of exercised fathers with respect to sedentary ones; 2) to compare the levels of gene expression in hippocampus of litters from exercised fathers with respect to litters from sedentary ones.