Exercise and cognition after early life anesthesia

Exercise has the ability to improve learning in memory in animals and humans alike. We hypothesized that this attribute might rescue the memory deficit that our lab and others have repeatedly shown in animals exposed to early life anesthesia. We have developed a protocol for voluntary exercise wheel running in rats exposed to early life anesthesia and through a battery of behavior tests and use of molecular biology, we are studying the effect of exercise on learning and memory and the underlying mechanism.