Exercise and the brain: Impacts on cognition, neural function, and mental health

It has been well established that physical exercise has broad impacts across the lifespan, including improved cognition, brain function, and mental health. Studies investigating the mechanism underlying the cognitive enhancing effect of exercise have primarily focused on spatial cognition that relies on the hippocampus. The positive effects of exercise likely occur throughout the brain, but there has been very little research on the mechanisms that underlie exercise-induced improvements in tasks that do not test spatial cognition or rely on hippocampal function. This is particularly important from a translational perspective since exercise studies in humans have reported the greatest improvements in executive-control processes that are mediated by the PFC, not the hippocampus. The goal of the present thesis was to unify these two bodies of literature and identify how exercise impacts non-hippocampal dependent learning and memory as well as improves mental health. Specifically, the effects of exercise were investigated within the context of an animal model of ADHD, a disorder of the PFC and its connections to the striatum.;The experiments described in this dissertation provided evidence that 1) exercise is as effective as common pharmacotherapies in treating ADHD-like behaviors in a rodent model of the disorder, 2) exercise improved attention in the SHR through a noradrenergic-dependent mechanism, and 3) the cognitive-enhancing effects of exercise can be transferred from mother to offspring. Taken together, these results suggest that exercise has widespread effects throughout the brain and has promising use as a therapeutic intervention in treating developmental disorders.