{"id":4220,"date":"2010-07-08T11:06:38","date_gmt":"2010-07-08T16:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=4220"},"modified":"2010-07-08T11:06:38","modified_gmt":"2010-07-08T16:06:38","slug":"phys-ed-your-brain-on-exercise-gretchen-reynolds-nyt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2010\/07\/08\/phys-ed-your-brain-on-exercise-gretchen-reynolds-nyt\/","title":{"rendered":"Phys Ed: Your Brain on Exercise [Gretchen Reynolds-NYT]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In her 7 July 2010 post to the NYT blog, Well, Gretchen Reynolds writes &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/well.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/07\/07\/your-brain-on-exercise\/\" target=\"_blank\">Your Brain on Exercise<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Some of the most reverberant recent studies were performed at Northwestern University\u2019s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. There, scientists have been manipulating the levels of bone-morphogenetic protein or BMP in the brains of laboratory mice. BMP, which is found in tissues throughout the body, affects cellular development in various ways, some of them deleterious. In the brain, BMP has been found to contribute to the control of stem cell divisions. Your brain, you will be pleased to learn, is packed with adult stem cells, which, given the right impetus, divide and differentiate into either additional stem cells or baby neurons. As we age, these stem cells tend to become less responsive. They don\u2019t divide as readily and can slump into a kind of cellular sleep. It\u2019s BMP that acts as the soporific. &#8230; The more active BMP and its various signals are in your brain, the more inactive your stem cells become and the less neurogenesis you undergo. Your brain grows slower, less nimble, older.<\/p>\n<p>But exercise countermands some of the numbing effects of BMP, Dr. Kessler says. In work at his lab, mice given access to running wheels had about 50 percent less BMP-related brain activity within a week. They also showed a notable increase in Noggin, a beautifully named brain protein that acts as a BMP antagonist. The more Noggin in your brain, the less BMP activity exists and the more stem cell divisions and neurogenesis you experience. Mice at Northwestern whose brains were infused directly with large doses of Noggin became, Dr. Kessler says, \u201clittle mouse geniuses, if there is such a thing.\u201d They aced the mazes and other tests.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I guess there is still a chance that you and I can become &#8220;little mouse geniuses.&#8221;\u00a0 Hooray!<\/p>\n<p>-RichardH<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In her 7 July 2010 post to the NYT blog, Well, Gretchen Reynolds writes &#8220;Your Brain on Exercise.&#8221; Some of the most reverberant recent studies were performed at Northwestern University\u2019s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. There, scientists have been manipulating the levels of bone-morphogenetic protein or BMP in the brains of laboratory mice. BMP, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[167],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4220","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-richardhsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4221,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4220\/revisions\/4221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}