Luke O'Neill

And this lit up like a Christmas tree during exercise.

And secondly, it kept firing at least one hour after the exercise ended.

Now, that got them because, you know, that part of the brain in particular seemed to be going on fire as well in a very beneficial way.

And not only that, but kept firing, you know, an hour after you stopped exercise.

And after two weeks of this and measuring it and looking at the program in the brain, the mice in particular were much more able to run faster, could run for longer on the treadmill.

Now, of course, that's partly training and anybody training for the marathon or the mini marathon will notice them getting better.

But it turns out that that increased endurance was because of the VMH.

Isn't that incredible?

Because the scientists could do something very clever.

They could interfere with the VMH using a special approach, which I can't come into, it's a bit complicated.

But if you stop the VMH firing, right, the mice could not develop this endurance.

Now, doesn't that tell you something interesting?

It's not just about their muscles then getting stronger.

There's something happening in the brain.

that allows them to be better able to exercise next time.

And when they interfered with this VMH region, first of all, the mice didn't improve over time in terms of their capacity for endurance, but they got much more fatigued as well after exercise.

There's something going on in this part of the brain as to how the body adapts during exercise.

Now, what I like about this is the lead scientist, his name is Nicholas Petley, he said, when we lift weights, we think we're just building muscle.

It turns out we might be building up our brain as well.

And he was referring to this VMH region of the brain.