Schizophrenia may be helped by exercise

MELBOURNE, Aug. 2 (UPI) -- An Australian study found that a genetically altered mouse with schizophrenia-like behaviors improved cognitively with enhanced mental and physical exercise.

Dr. Anthony Hanan, Dr. Caitlin MacLeish, Emma Burrows and colleagues at the Howard Florey Institute at the University of Melbourne characterized a genetically altered mouse with schizophrenia-like behaviors, including learning and memory problems, the inability to process complex information and abnormal responses to particular sensory stimuli.

Not only did the mouse's schizophrenia-like symptoms ease through this environmental enrichment -- putting running wheels in their cages, plus interesting items to smell, see and touch -- but a specific chemical transmitter pathway found to be abnormal in the cerebral cortex of the mice was selectively rescued, according to the study published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

Schizophrenia is a brain disorder that is brought on through a complex and largely unknown interaction of genes and environment.