A New Role for Platelets: Boosting Neurogenesis After Exercise

A team of Australian and German researchers has uncovered one mechanism that explains how exercise boosts neurogenesis in mice: the activity causes platelets circulating in the blood to release factors that boost the growth of neural precursor cells in the hippocampus, the researchers report today (March 21) in Stem Cell Reports. To see if platelets and the proteins they release can boost neurogenesis, the team extracted stem cells from the mouse hippocampal dentate gyrus—one of the two main sites of neurogenesis in the adult brain. Earlier measurements on human blood have shown that exercise can activate platelets, and separate experiments suggest that the activation of mouse platelets following injury can boost neurogenesis in vitro, she notes.

Source: www.the-scientist.com