Table 2.

Examples of voluntary exercise protocols (running wheel).

Animal model	Running wheel protocol	Behavior	AHN and neuroplasticity	References
Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats	For 2 weeks	No behavioral tasks perfomed	↑ cellular proliferation in the SGZ; ↑↑ number of Ki67+ cells in the SGZ; ↑ total length of granule cells dendrites; ↑ spine density	Eadie et al., 2005
Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats	For 2 weeks	No behavioral tasks perfomed	↑ cell proliferation; ↑ granule cells with single primary processes	Redila and Christie, 2006
Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats	For 2 months	No behavioral tasks perfomed	↑ spines; ↑ dendrite length; ↑ arborization complexity in the DG	Stranahan et al., 2007
Female Long-Evans rats	In social isolation condition for 10 days	No behavioral tasks perfomed	No changes in the number of BrdU+ cells	Leasure and Decker, 2009
Flinders sensitive line (FSL) rats (a genetic model of depression)	For 1 month	Forced Swim Test: ↓ time of immobility than sedentary control	4 days after Forced Swim Test: ↑ cell proliferation in SGZ	Bjørnebekk et al., 2005
Male Sprague-Dawley adult rats subjected to a lateral fluid percussion injury	From day 0 to day 6 post-injury	No behavioral tasks perfomed	↑ plasticity markers in the sham operates, but ↓ in the injured rats	Griesbach et al., 2004
Adult female C57BL/6 mice (3 months old)	For 2 to 4 months	Morris Water Maze (between day 30 and 49): with 2 trials/day, runners decrease path length and latency to the platform	↑ BrdU+ and BrdU+/NeuN+ cells	Van Praag et al., 1999
Adult female C57BL/6JRj mice (10 weeks old)	For 5 days	No behavioral tasks perfomed	↑ proliferation; No changes in the S-phase and total cell cycle length; ↓ G1 phase	Fischer et al., 2014
Adult male C57bl/6 mice (2 months of age)	For 3 weeks	Radial Arm Water Maze: ↑ cognitive performance	No histological or molecular procedures were performed	Berchtold et al., 2010
Adult male C57bl/6 mice (2 months of age)	For 2 weeks	Fear conditioning: ↓startle amplitude in the absence of the tone both before and after conditioning; No changes in shock sensitization of startle; ↑ cued conditioned fear.	No histological or molecular procedures were performed	Falls et al., 2010
Adult male C57BL/6 mice (3 months old)	For 23 km	Pattern separation: ↑ enhanced spatial touch-screen performance when stimuli were presented in close proximity in adult mice	↑ number and density of BrdU+ cells; No changes in number of BrdU+/NeuN+ cells	Creer et al., 2010
C57BL/6 mice subjected to 6-Gy irradiation at P9	Introduced to a running wheel at 9 weeks of age for 4 weeks	Open-field test: running alleviates irradiation-induced behavioral alterations.	Exercise after irradiation: ↑ number of BrdU+/NeuN+ cells; ↑number of GFAP+/Sox2+ cells; No changes in the number of DCX+ cells	Naylor et al., 2008
Female TgCRND8 mouse line (encondes a double mutant form of APP 695)	For 1 month	Morris Water Maze: ↑ performance on day 1 and day 2; No changes in the probe trial	No histological or molecular procedures were performed	Adlard et al., 2005
Female R6/2 mice (a transgenic model of Huntington's disease)	5 mice per cage with access to two running wheels for 4 weeks	No behavioral tasks perfomed	No changes in cell proliferation; No changes in the number of neural progenitor cells; No changes in the survival of newborn hippocampal neurons	Kohl et al., 2007
Female synRas (a mouse model with reduced neurogenesis) (2–3 months old)	For 12 days	Novel object recognition task: ↑ performance	↑ proliferation rate; ↑ density of DCX+ cells; ↑dendritic arborization of the immature neurons	Lafenêtre et al., 2010

Voluntary running increases hippocampal neurogenesis and improves learning. References included in the Table and not in the text are: (Llorens-Martín et al., 2006; Chen et al., 2008; Liu et al., 2008; Glasper et al., 2010; Lin et al., 2012; Lezi et al., 2014; Nam et al., 2014).