Early-life stress diminishes the increase in neurogenesis after exercise in adult female mice

Exposure to early-life stress (ES) has long-lasting consequences for later cognition and hippocampal plasticity, including adult hippocampal neurogenesis (AHN), i.e., the generation of new neurons from stem/progenitor cells in the adult hippocampal dentate gyrus. We had previously demonstrated a sex-specific vulnerability to ES exposure; female mice exposed to ES from P2-P9 exhibited only very mild cognitive changes and no reductions in AHN as adult, whereas ES-exposed male mice showed impaired cognition closely associated with reductions in AHN. Given the apparent resilience of AHN to ES in females, we here questioned whether ES has also altered the capacity to respond to positive stimuli for neurogenesis. We therefore investigated whether exercise, known for its strong pro-neurogenic effects, can still stimulate AHN in adult female mice that had been earlier exposed to ES. We confirm a strong pro-neurogenic effect of exercise in the dorsal hippocampus of 8-month-old control female mice, but this positive neurogenic response is less apparent in female ES mice. These data provide novel insights in the lasting consequences of ES on hippocampal plasticity in females and also indicate that ES might lastingly reduce the responsiveness of the hippocampal stem cell pool, to exercise, in female mice.