SU20. Aerobic Exercise Intervention for Clinical High-Risk Youth Improves Cognitive and Hippocampal Abnormalities

Abstract

Background: Because exercise has been found to stimulate human medial temporal neurogenesis, and related abnormalities have been widely observed in studies of schizophrenia, cardiovascular activity may be an important intervention mechanism for psychosis. Despite the promise of exercise interventions, there have been no experimental studies of aerobic exercise in ultra-high risk youth (UHR). Methods: Participants were evaluated with a pretrial and post-trial assessment including clinical, cognitive, structural/functional imaging, and ftness assessments. Participants were enrolled in 12 weeks of supervised aerobic exercise (3 times each week, 65%-85% of VO2max). Results: A total of 11 participants enrolled in the study and 9 completed the trial (attending 100% of sessions). The participants exhibited level hip-pocampal volumes (no-change posttrial) as well as posttrial improvement in working (t(8) =-2.75, P ⩽.05), visual (t(8) =-2.27, P ⩽.05), and verbal (t(8) =-1.88, P ⩽.05) memory, while unrelated domains appeared unaffected across the trial. Notably, increases in visual learning were linked to signifcant increases in hippocampal-occipital connectivity, and participants showed trend-level improvements in positive (t(8) =-1.83, P =.06) and negative (t(8) = 1.40, P =.10) symptoms and a signifcant increase in social function posttrial (t(7), =-3.74, P ⩽.01). There were nonsignifcant increases in VO2 max as well as a trend-level increase in extracurricular exercise activities posttrial (t(8) =-1.11, P =.15). Conclusion: Taken together, results suggest that aerobic exercise is a feasible and effective intervention that specifcally targets medial temporal function. This presentation will also discuss the ongoing second phase of the study, including a randomized controlled trial (including a wait-listed UHR group) as well as the long-term follow-up of individuals who participated in the open-label phase.