End of week 5 and we finally know what everyone’s projects are about!
I really love how varied our projects are: from music, mantis shrimp, and cancer cells, to pain maps, smooth muscle, and my plants. Some projects do share similarities in involving mice or cancer applications though. Honestly I was surprised that no one was working with plant biology like I am.
A number of projects really stood out to me, but the one that is among my top 3 favorites is definitely Hannah’s project, investigating the effects of voluntary exercise on hippocampal neurogenesis in immunodeficient mice.
As someone with no prior neuroscience knowledge, my initial reaction to her project was ”huh?”. Thus, I was pretty grateful that Hannah started from the basics, explaining that neurogenesis, as explained by its name, is the birth of ”new neurons”, which predominantly takes place in the hippocampus and the SVZ in the adult brain. It was surprising to learn that the immune system also helps with neurogenesis, since T-cells are involved in adult neurogenesis/spatial learning/memory. Therefore immunodeficient just means that the mice lack T-cells.
Whole Brain Irradiation (WBI) is a form of cancer treatment that comes at the cost of it preventing hippocampal neurogenesis form occurring. But Hannah’s hypothesis, based on results from another study, is that voluntary exercise can actually recover hippocampal neurogenesis in mice even after treated with WBI! How will she be testing this? She’ll be assessing their spatial memory through maze tests, where the mice have to find a hole on a circular table.
What really amazes me though is the implications of Hannah’s project. It really shows us how powerful exercise can be. Apparently mice (with and even without WBI treatment) that voluntarily run a great distance (a mile!) are already exhibiting an advantage in memory. I don’t know about you, but that definitely encourages me to get up out of this chair and move. Of course, I know that doesn’t mean that I’m going to have improved memory. (Plus, these mice are running all day, and not everyone has time for that). It’s just good to know there’s growing evidence that exercise is a great benefit.
Time to hit to gym! (but not really ha..)
