Environmental Enrichment (Burrows et al)

Like many other neurological diseases, schizophrenia has environmental factors that play a role in the expression of its disease and Burrows et al discusses how the environmental factors can play just as much of an important role in schizophrenia as the genetic factors.

I find it fascinating that Burrows and her associates showed how big of an impact the environment has on neural function and how environmental enrichment (EE), as an animal model, was able to improve schizophrenia-related behavioral impairments, especially in mice lacking metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGlu5). If EE can improve some of the behavioral impairments found in schizophrenia in both mGlu5 knockout and wild type mice, how can these findings benefit humans with this disease?

EE mice were put in a situation that improved their mental state by giving them more space and creating a more likeable environment. The idea that environmental factors can help improve these impairments in mice, similar environmental factors that causes a better mental state such as physical exercise can be viewed as a way to improve these impairments in humans.  For instance, physical exercises have been shown to help with the production of BDNF in the hippocampus of humans. Interestingly, increased protein levels of hippocampal BDNF have been seen in WT mice following EE in this paper. (Supplementary Figure 3). Perhaps providing a better mental state for these mice, through EE, can have a similar and potential benefit on humans when they engage in physical exercise, leading to improvement in memory. Strangely, they mentioned that even thought there was increased BDNF protein levels in EE WT mice, no improvement in learning or memory was found, which they tried to justify as “due to the degree of difficulty of the tasks used”. Even though increased expression of BDNF on hippocampus has been shown to induce improvement in memory and learning in another publication they referenced (Falkenberg et al, 1992).

Their data has shown an improvement in spatial learning and reduction in startle response, which are both problematic areas in patients of schizophrenia. And modulating the environment of mice caused this. One can say that the take home message of this study suggests that a better mental state caused through a better environment, or in the long haul physical exercise, can have a positive influence on those suffering from schizophrenia.