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Chronic Intermittent Fasting Improves Cognitive Functions and Brain Structures in Mice
Open accessAbstract
Obesity is a major health issue. Obesity started from teenagers has become a major health concern in recent years. Intermittent fasting increases the life span. However, it is not known whether obesity and intermittent fasting affect brain functions and structures before brain aging. Here, we subjected 7-week old CD-1 wild type male mice to intermittent (alternate-day) fasting or high fat diet (45% caloric supplied by fat) for 11 months. Mice on intermittent fasting had better learning and memory assessed by the Barnes maze and fear conditioning, thicker CA1 pyramidal cell layer, higher expression of drebrin, a dendritic protein, and lower oxidative stress than mice that had free access to regular diet (control mice). Mice fed with high fat diet was obese and with hyperlipidemia. They also had poorer exercise tolerance. However, these obese mice did not present significant learning and memory impairment or changes in brain structures or oxidative stress compared with control mice. These results suggest that intermittent fasting improves brain functions and structures and that high fat diet feeding started early in life does not cause significant changes in brain functions and structures in obese middle-aged animals.
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“Intermittent fasting (IF) is a diet with salutary effects on cognitive aging, Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and stroke.”
From 2-Deoxyglucose drives plasticity via an adaptive ER stress-ATF4 pathway and elicits stroke recovery and Alzheimer’s resilience (2023) · cites this paper as [6]
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Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Li, L., Wang, Z., & Zuo, Z.
- Affiliations
- University of Virginia (US)
- Sun Yat-sen University (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Zuo, Zhiyi
- Venue
- PLoS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2013-06-03
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- e66069
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3670843
- OpenAlex
- W1974661288
- Cited by
- 147
- References
- 23
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 14 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 6
- FWCI
- 5.34
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- American Heart Association (10GRNT3900019)
- International Anesthesia Research Society (R01 GM065211)
- National Institutes of Health (GM098308)
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R01GM065211, R01GM098308)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology (medical) › Dietary Effects on Health
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Aging › Genetics, Aging, and Longevity in Model Organisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Neurology › Neurological Disease Mechanisms and Treatments
- Keywords
- intermittent fasting, alternate-day fasting, cognitive function, learning and memory, brain aging, high-fat diet, obesity, drebrin, oxidative stress, hyperlipidemia, exercise tolerance, Barnes maze, fear conditioning, middle-aged mice
- MeSH terms
- Aging, Animals, Cerebral Cortex, Cognition, Dietary Fats, Fasting, Male, Memory, Mice, Obese, Neuropeptides, Obesity, Exercise Tolerance, Oxidative Stress, Maze Learning, Mice, CA1 Region, Hippocampal, Diet, High-Fat
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