Mild exercise habits during development could prevent schizophrenia, study reveals Although schizophrenia is increasingly understood as a neurodevelopmental disorder, environmental factors are known to play an important role in the disease onset and progression. But now, researchers from Japan have found that exercise during a specific postnatal period may prevent the development of behaviors associated with schizophrenia. In a study published this month in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, researchers from the University of Tsukuba have revealed that low-intensity exercise during adolescence, which is a critical developmental period, significantly reduced abnormal behaviors in a mouse model of schizophrenia. An enriched environment during development has been found to have a number of positive effects on brain function, including the prevention of neurodevelopmental disorders. Although exercise appears to have a particularly important effect, the combination of variables present in enriched environments can make it difficult to isolate the mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects. To address this, the researchers at the University of Tsukuba developed a new exercise model in which mice ran on a treadmill at a fixed speed. They then tested whether low-intensity treadmill running prevented abnormal behaviors in a mouse model of schizophrenia.