Influence of Physical Exercise on Traumatic Brain Injury Deficits: Scaffolding Effect

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) may be due to a bump, blow, or jolt to the head or a penetrating head injury that disrupts normal brain function; it presents an ever-growing, serious public health problem that causes a considerable number of fatalities and cases of permanent disability annually. Physical exercise restores the healthy homeostatic regulation of stress, affect and the regulation of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. Physical activity attenuates or reverses the performance deficits observed in neurocognitive tasks. It induces anti-apoptotic effects and buttresses blood-brain barrier intactness. Exercise offers a unique non-pharmacologic, non-invasive intervention that incorporates different regimes, whether dynamic or static, endurance, or resistance. Exercise intervention protects against vascular risk factors that include hypertension, diabetes, cellular inflammation, and aortic rigidity. It induces direct changes in cerebrovasculature that produce beneficial changes in cerebral blood flow, angiogenesis and vascular disease improvement. The improvements induced by physical exercise regimes in brain plasticity and neurocognitive performance are evident both in healthy individuals and in those afflicted by TBI. The overlap and inter-relations between TBI effects on brain and cognition as related to physical exercise and cognition may provide lasting therapeutic benefits for recovery from TBI. It seems likely that some modification of the notion of scaffolding would postulate that physical exercise reinforces the adaptive processes of the brain that has undergone TBI thereby facilitating the development of existing networks, albeit possibly less efficient, that compensate for those lost through damage.

Efficiency of an Active Rehabilitation Intervention in a Slow-to-Recover Paediatric Population following Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: A Pilot Study

“…Recent reviews of the literature support the benefits of exercise as an active rehabilitation treatment when postconcussion symptoms persist beyond the expected recovery period after injury [20, 21, 25, 26]. Indeed, it has been postulated that the introduction of physical activity may have a positive impact on the chronic symptoms following mTBI [17, 24, 27–42]. Preliminary evidence demonstrated that exercise, when used as a treatment, reduces reported symptoms in adults [17, 18, 22, 43, 44] and in youth who are slow-to-recover after mTBI [9, 35, 45].…”

Exercise Benefits Brain Function: The Monoamine Connection

“…Regular physical exercise has been proved to have therapeutic benefit [1], such as treating psychiatric illnesses [2,3,4,5,6,7], supporting brain injury recovery [8,9,10,11,12], and resisting neurodegenerative diseases [13,14,15,16,17,18]. The advantageous effects of exercise on brain functions have been attributed to increased capacities of metabolism reserve and antioxidation [19,20].…”

Exercise in Anorexia Nervosa: Complexity of Pathology and Health

“…pro-inflammatory cytokines and cortisol. Taking into account, the large proportion of individuals with more-or-less sedentary preoccupations, physical exercise presents uniquely one of the most potent health-promoting lifestyles available by rendering positive outcomes for both neurologic and psychiatric conditions [10][11][12][13][14][15]. It is beneficial also within domains defined by neurocognitive capacity, quality-of-life, postural and motor efficacy and affective status [16][17][18].…”