The protective effect of aerobic training on cognitive impairment and motor dysfunction in male rats following cerebral ischemia

If the blood supply to a part of the brain gets disturbed and stopped, this part of the brain can not function normally. This condition is called stroke. The aim of this study was to examine the protective effect of 4-week aerobic training on cognitive impairment and motor dysfunction in male rats following cerebral ischemia. Materials and
For this purpose, 27 adult male Wistar rats (weighing 230-260 g) were purchased and randomly divided into three groups: sham, iscehemia and exercise training 談ẅ groups. The rats in exercise group were trained to run on a treadmill 5 days a week for 4 weeks. Ischemia was induced by the occlusion of both common carotid arteries (CCA) for 20 min. The passive avoidance memory test was used to assess the memory impairments. Behavioral test including inclend plane was used to assess motor function. For data analysis, Kolmogroph-Smirnoff, one-way ANOVA and Scheffe post-hoc tests were used (p Results showed that the exercise training significantly reduced the ischemia-induced disorder in the short-term memory in passive avoidance memory test (p= 0.0001). However, motor function of ischemic rats did not change significantly in the inclend plane test after exercise (p= 0.137).
In general, 4 weeks of aerobic training improved cognitive impairment in ischemic rats.