There's no doubt that exercise does a body good. Regular activity not only strengthens muscles but can bolster our bones, blood vessels, and immune system. Now, MIT engineers have found that exercise can also have benefits at the level of individual neurons.
They observed that when muscles contract during exercise, they release a soup of biochemical signals called myokines. In the presence of these muscle-generated signals, neurons grew four times farther compared to neurons that were not exposed to myokines. These cellular-level experiments suggest that exercise can have a significant biochemical effect on nerve growth.
Surprisingly, the researchers also found that neurons respond not only to the biochemical signals of exercise but also to its physical impacts. The team observed that when neurons are repeatedly pulled back and forth, similarly to how muscles contract and expand during exercise, the neurons grow just as much as when they are exposed to a muscle's myokines. While previous studies have indicated a potential biochemical link between muscle activity and nerve growth, this study is the first to show that physical effects can be just as important, the researchers say.
The results, which will be published in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials , shed light on the connection between muscles and nerves during exercise, and could inform exercise-related therapies for repairing damaged and deteriorating nerves. Now that we know this muscle-nerve crosstalk exists, .