Exercise promotes growth and rescues volume deficits in the hippocampus after cranial radiation in young mice.

Human and animal studies suggest that exercise promotes healthy brain development and function, including promoting hippocampal growth. Childhood cancer survivors that have received cranial radiotherapy exhibit hippocampal volume deficits and are at risk of impaired cognitive function, thus they may benefit from regular exercise. While morphological changes induced by exercise have been characterized using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in humans and animal models, evaluation of changes across the brain through development and following cranial radiation is lacking.

Patterns of change in cortical morphometry following traumatic brain injury in adults.

Progressive cortical volumetric loss following moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been observed; however, regionally specific changes in the structural determinants of cortical volume, namely, cortical thickness (CT) and cortical surface area (CSA), are unknown and may inform the patterns and neural substrates of neurodegeneration and plasticity following injury. We aimed to (a) assess differences in CT and CSA between TBI participants and controls in the early chronic stage post-injury, (b) describe longitudinal changes in cortical morphometry following TBI, and (c) examine how regional changes in CT and CSA are associated. We acquired magnetic resonance images for 67 participants with TBI at up to 4 time-points spanning 5 months to 7 years post-injury, and 18 controls at 2 time-points.

Metformin effects on brain development following cranial irradiation in a mouse model.

Background: Cranial radiation therapy (CRT) is a mainstay of treatment for malignant pediatric brain tumors and high-risk leukemia. Although CRT improves survival, it has been shown to disrupt normal brain development and result in cognitive impairments in cancer survivors. Animal studies suggest that there is potential to promote brain recovery after injury using metformin.

Early changes in white matter predict intellectual outcome in children treated for posterior fossa tumors.

Purpose: Prospective and longitudinal neuroimaging studies of posterior fossa tumors are scarce. Here we evaluate the early changes in white matter and intellectual outcome up to 3 years after diagnosis.

Patients And Methods: Twenty-two children with posterior fossa tumors and 24 similarly-aged healthy children participated.

Impaired Recent, but Preserved Remote, Autobiographical Memory in Pediatric Brain Tumor Patients.

Medulloblastomas, the most common malignant brain tumor in children, are typically treated with radiotherapy. Refinement of this treatment has greatly improved survival rates in this patient population. However, radiotherapy also profoundly affects the developing brain and is associated with reduced hippocampal volume and blunted hippocampal neurogenesis.

Mouse MRI shows brain areas relatively larger in males emerge before those larger in females.

Sex differences exist in behaviors, disease and neuropsychiatric disorders. Sexual dimorphisms however, have yet to be studied across the whole brain and across a comprehensive time course of postnatal development. Here, we use manganese-enhanced MRI (MEMRI) to longitudinally image male and female C57BL/6J mice across 9 time points, beginning at postnatal day 3.

Repairing the brain with physical exercise: Cortical thickness and brain volume increases in long-term pediatric brain tumor survivors in response to a structured exercise intervention.

There is growing evidence that exercise induced experience dependent plasticity may foster structural and functional recovery following brain injury. We examined the efficacy of exercise training for neural and cognitive recovery in long-term pediatric brain tumor survivors treated with radiation. We conducted a controlled clinical trial with crossover of exercise training (vs.