How exercise could lead to a better brain

Re:How exercise could lead to a better brain by agentgt on Monday April 23, 2012 @08:44PM (#3881845)

There was a scientific america article (I know not exactly "science") that showed how gene expression could in fact affect future offspring mainly through nurture. I believe the study was obese mice parents through gene expression would lead to obese mice children. However they believe this was caused through nurture.

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Re:How exercise could lead to a better brain by pazimzadeh on Tuesday April 24, 2012 @02:38AM (#3882756)

Yes, those obese mice are called Agouti mice, and the concept overall is called epigenetics. The ON/OFF state of genes can be changed through diet, nurture, and more. For example, if you do not eat very nutritious food you might not have enough methyl groups to methylate (turn OFF) some of the genes that are currently ON but should naturally switch.

http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/obesity-epigenetics... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics

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Re:How exercise could lead to a better brain by SamReidHughes on Monday April 23, 2012 @10:16PM (#3882105)

IANAB but I wouldn't be completely surprised if the gene expression of an egg or sperm cell or fetus depended on the conditions of the parent. (I wouldn't be surprised otherwise, if sperm and egg cells are designed to be as independent as possible from the parent.) It might not be gene expression in particular, after all, drug use affects babies, so why not obesity? Of course we were originally talking about gene expression within brains.

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Re:How exercise could lead to a better brain by xaa on Tuesday April 24, 2012 @06:24AM (#3883252)

"epigenetic inheritance". Another example: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7373/full/nature1...

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