blog

With Christmas on its way, exercise may be the last thing on your mind, but if the thought of getting all the Christmas shopping done or preparing Christmas lunch for the whole family is making you anxious, there could be one simple remedy: physical activity.

There has been a growing body of research suggesting that exercise can reduce the incidence and severity of psychological disorders such as anxiety and depression, but what mechanisms underlie the anxiolytic effects of exercise? Paul Strong and colleagues, along with their research mentor Ben Greenwood, are based at the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA and aim to answer this very question. He explained,

An understanding of the mechanisms by which exercise prevents anxiety could eventually lead to more effective therapeutics designed to prevent or reverse symptoms of anxiety or depression.

In their poster focusing on 5-HT_2Creceptors in the basolateral amygdala and dorsal striatum, Strong and colleagues demonstrated that activation of these receptors in discrete brain regions produced various anxiety-like behaviours in rats. Noting that there are at least 16 different receptors for serotonin (5-HT), Greenwood adds,

it was rather surprising that the same receptor, the 5-HT_2C receptor, was involved in multiple behavioral consequences of stressor exposure, because these behaviors are mediated by totally different regions in the brain.

Consequently, the group were able to demonstrate that rats with a history of wheel running (exercise) were protected against the behavioral consequences of 5-HT_2C receptor activation, which indicates that exercise might have a global modulatory effect on the receptor.

Having presented this work at Neuroscience 2011, the group looks to their future research: “many of the questions we receive are ones we are also currently asking [such as] how does physical activity change the expression and/or sensitivity of 5-HT_2C receptors?” Their hope is that identification of the mechanism behind this modulation could provide insight into novel ways to treat anxiety.

The group also wonders if their findings can explain the effects of exercise on other neurochemical systems, given that the 5-HT_2C receptor has been implicated in other processes modulated by physical activity such as sleep and feeding behavior. Greenwood concludes,

Modulation of the 5-HT_2C receptor could be a common mechanism involved in many of the beneficial effects of exercise.

So, why not beat the Christmas anxiety and January waistline all in one go?