Recovery from brain injury in animals: relative efficacy of environmental enrichment, physical exercise or formal training (1990–2002)

Environmental enrichment increases progenitor cell survival in the dentate gyrus following lateral fluid percussion injury

“…This finding is in general agreement with several previous studies that have demonstrated that EE can increase neural progenitors in the hippocampus [6,7,16,22,54,79,81]. However, this finding was also novel and somewhat unexpected in comparison to previous studies because 1) in intact animals, EE produced bilateral increases in neural progenitors in the granule cell layer, and no increases in the hilus [6,54,81], and 2) following an ischemic injury, two weeks of EE did not have an additive effect on the number of progenitor cells in the dentate gyrus [5].…”

“…Another possible explanation for the lack of a bilateral effect of EE on cell proliferation in the dentate is that we provided animals with just 1 hour of daily EE, whereas most previous studies provided EE for 24 h/d [79]. However, 1 h/d of EE was sufficient to attenuate deficits in spatial learning in the MWM following FP (Fig.…”

“…Environmental enrichment (EE) is a well established intervention for attenuating cognitive deficits associated with FP injury [4,28,35,59,76], as well as other experimental brain injury models [13,79]. Although our understanding of how EE mediates functional recovery after brain injury is incomplete, one explanation is that it promotes adaptations of surviving neural networks, enabling them to take over functions of damaged regions of the brain.…”

Environmental Enrichment Reverses Behavioral Alterations in Rats Prenatally Exposed to Valproic Acid: Issues for a Therapeutic Approach in Autism

“…However, it has been suggested that the most Animal model of autism T Schneider et al important single factor in stimulating brain changes in enriched rats is the enforced interaction with the physical environment. Thus, the vital element in enrichment effects may be the cognitive engagement with the environment, confronting the contingencies between responses and the consequences of those responses (Rosenzweig et al, 1972;Will et al, 2004). Other components of enriched environment, such as physical exercise, may have additive effects with those of training .…”

Cognitive Remediation for Schizophrenia

“…Exposure to enriched environments is analogous to learning through training with similar mechanisms at play in modifying brain function. 43) Spontaneous clinical improvement in stroke, trauma, and spinal cord injuries is associated with observable changes at both the cellular level and within the functional connectivity of the relevant neural networks. 44) Moreover, therapies designed to employ the brain's plasticity have been shown to mimic or exceed these changes.…”