Increased Cerebellar Volume and BDNF Level Following Quadrato Motor Training

Maintaining neuroplasticity is an important goal, which can be stimulated through training, by activating molecular mechanisms, for example, regulation of growth factors (GF; Cotman and Berchtold, 2002). Multidisciplinary studies combining the examination of training-induced structural and GF changes in humans are scarce. Consequently, the relationship between training-induced structural and GF changes in humans has yet to be established. Therefore, the aim of the current exploratory study was to examine the link between structural and GF changes following sensorimotor training. We conducted a pilot multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) longitudinal study designed to identify the possible link between structural and molecular effects of a 12-week daily practice of quadrato motor training (QMT), a sensorimotor training which has recently been reported to increase functional connectivity and cognitive function (Ben-Soussan et al., 2013, 2014a,b). Structural high-resolution 3D T1-weighted (sMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data were acquired for three healthy female volunteers. For DTI, we used fractional anisotropy (FA) value, a marker of white matter (WM) integrity (Pfefferbaum et al., 2000). As animal studies have demonstrated that severe deficiencies in motor coordination in brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) knockout mice are linked to abnormal cerebellar development (Ernfors et al., 1994; Schwartz et al., 1997), for the molecular examination we focused on BDNF, a key GF mediating neuronal connectivity and use-dependent plasticity (Cotman and Berchtold, 2002; Gatt et al., 2008). Although this is a small sample study which still needs further support, the current research may shed light on the relationship between sensorimotor training-induced structural and molecular changes.