Chunk #87 — Future Directions: Combining Stress and Alcohol Models and Assessment of Multigenerational Effects and Therapeutics — Therapeutic Strategies
Aside from pharmacological manipulations, environmental manipulations have likewise been shown to have beneficial effects through altering the epigenome. Exercise and environmental complexity have been used as behavioral interventions and have beneficial effects on neuroplasticity and behavioral measures (Boschen et al., 2016; Gómez-Pinilla et al., 2002; Hamilton et al., 2012; Helfer et al., 2009). In alcohol-exposed rat pups, exercise (voluntary wheel running) was associated with reduced methylation at exons I and IV of the Bdnf gene, as well as significantly increased Bdnf exon-specific mRNA levels and hippocampal dendritic complexity (Boschen et al., 2016). Similarly, rodents subjected to stress in infancy have shown a rescue of brain and behavioral outcomes via exercise (Wearick-Silva et al., 2017) and environmental enrichment (Champagne and Meaney, 2007; Wang et al., 2014). Maternal separation during the first two postnatal weeks altered behavioral performance and exon-specific Bdnf gene expression in adolescence; however, three weeks of exercise reversed these changes (Wearick-Silva et al., 2017). These results should be interpreted with caution, as control runners showed decreases or no change in Bdnf gene expression after running, a result that is contrary to most literature investigating exercise and BDNF.
