Physical Exercise-Induced Adult Neurogenesis: A Good Strategy to Prevent Cognitive Decline in Neurodegenerative Diseases?
Figure 1
Development and integration of adult-born neurons in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. (a) The neural progenitors that are divided from neural stem cells start expressing either neuronal or glial phenotypes after just a few days of division. Newborn neurons gradually migrate from the subgranular zone (SGZ) into the granular cell layer (GCL) where they undergo maturation, followed by functional integration into the existing neural circuitry in the hippocampus. This process of hippocampal neurogenesis is known to be promoted by physical exercise and to be compromised in several neurodegenerative diseases such as AD, PD, and HD. (b) Confocal image of 4-week-old retroviral-labeled newborn neurons with green fluorescence protein (GFP) in the GCL (scale bar: 200 μm).
