Voluntary Exercise and Physical Activity in Rodent Models

Rodent models of voluntary exercise and physical activity have become indispensable tools for dissecting the multifaceted effects of self‐paced movement on physiology, neurobiology and behaviour. By offering animals unrestricted access to running wheels or by capturing spontaneous physical activity within home cages, researchers can investigate endurance adaptations, energy homeostasis and cognitive outcomes under low‐stress conditions. Unlike forced protocols, voluntary paradigms respect the animal’s intrinsic motivation, yielding patterns of intermittent running that mirror natural exploratory and foraging behaviours. Analysis of these patterns has illuminated how voluntary exercise induces skeletal muscle remodelling, enhances cardiometabolic health and modulates central reward circuits. Furthermore, genetic and environmental modulators of activity levels can be probed through selective breeding, dietary manipulation and microbiome alterations, revealing interactions between genotype, motivational pathways and peripheral signals such as leptin and dopamine. Collectively, voluntary exercise models bridge the gap between mechanistic insight and translational relevance, shedding light on how individual variation in activity propensity influences ageing, neuroplasticity and disease resistance.

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Voluntary Exercise and Physical Activity in Rodent Models publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in voluntary exercise and physical activity in rodent models across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Voluntary wheel running: A behavioural paradigm in which rodents choose to run on a wheel without experimenter coercion, modelling self‐paced exercise.

Spontaneous Physical Activity (SPA): Unforced movements within the home cage, including rearing, grooming and short ambulations, contributing to total energy expenditure.

Convolutional Neural Network (CNN): A type of deep learning architecture used to analyse sequential image data, here applied to detect foot‐strike events during running.

Gut microbiome: The community of microorganisms residing in the gastrointestinal tract, which can influence host metabolism and behaviour.

Gait analysis: Quantitative assessment of limb movement patterns to characterise locomotor mechanics and detect subtle alterations in running behaviour.

References

1. Interplay between Learning and Voluntary Wheel Running in Male C57BL/6NCrl Mice. International Journal of Molecular Sciences (2023).
2. A convolutional neural network to characterize mouse hindlimb foot strikes during voluntary wheel running. Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology (2023).
3. Voluntary wheel running: patterns and physiological effects in mice. Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research (2019).
4. Running from Disease: Molecular Mechanisms Associating Dopamine and Leptin Signaling in the Brain with Physical Inactivity, Obesity, and Type 2 Diabetes. Frontiers in Endocrinology (2017).
5. Oral antibiotics reduce voluntary exercise behavior in athletic mice. Behavioural Processes (2022).