Abstract #4927

Exercise selectively increases cerebral blood flow in the postcentral gyrus in patients with Huntington’s disease

Jessica Steventon¹, Hannah Furby^2,3, Richard Wise³, and Kevin Murphy¹

¹School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom, ²Department of Neurodegenerative Disease, University College London, London, United Kingdom, ³School of Psychology, Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom

The therapeutic potential of exercise - a potent trigger for both neurogenesis and vascular plasticity - is currently a hot research topic in neurodegenerative diseases. Here we tested whether a single 20-minute bout of aerobic exercise was sufficient to induce changes in cerebral blood flow (CBF) in people with Huntington’s disease (HD). We find a transient and selective increase in CBF in the postcentral gyrus in HD participants following exercise, a region with reduced intrinsic functional connectivity in HD patients, with no change in healthy controls. The CBF change was unrelated to clinical and genetic markers of disease.

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