PREVENTIVE EFFECT OF TWELVE WEEKS MODERATE TREADMILL TRAINING ON ACTIVE AVOIDANCE LEARNING IMPAIRMENT THROUGH BILATERAL HIPPOCAMPAL LESION IN RATS: COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL EVIDENCE

Preventive effects of exercise on human health is well documented but there are
some challenges about the preventive effects of exercise on the incidence, intensity, or the prevalence
of clinical and paraclinical outcomes of neurodegenerative disease. The study of different aspects of
exercise in finding the mechanism of prevention is very important. The preventive effects of the
moderate treadmill training on the learning impairment due to bilateral hippocampal lesion in the rat
were evaluated in this study.
Materials & Methods: Thirty male healthy Wistar rats were allocated into six groups with equal (n=5)
number called; naïve, control with training, sham with and without training, hippocampal lesion with or
without training groups. CA3 of animal hippocampi were lesioned by applying electrical current (10
mA, 20 sec) under control stereotaxic surgery. The trained groups after one-week adaptation had one
hour of moderated treadmill training for 12 months. The conditioned active avoidance learning was
assessed by shuttle box apparatus. Learning assay included 3 sessions daily with 5 trials in each and 3
hours inter-session interval for 10 days. Crosstab and two-way ANOVA were used for statistical
evaluation with p<0.05 as the least significance level.
Results: The results showed that the number of trained animals in achieving improved learning was
greater compared with untrained animals. Although animals with the bilateral hippocampal lesions had
learning impairment compared with the control; the trained lesioned animals showed better learning in
the trail numbers and days in achieving the level to avoid electrical shock.
Conclusion: Although exercise preventive effects are obvious, the efficacy of exercise type, duration,
intensity, and mechanism of action need some other studies. The effects of different forms of exercise
on the cognition is not investigated well. Here, the moderate treadmill training showed preventive effects
on learning impairment due to bilateral hippocampal lesion in the rats.