By Skye Curry, Julian Burke, Allison Nork, Dezi Logan
Faculty mentor: Dr. Parrish Waters
Sociability is an individual’s tendency to seek out social interactions, engage in interpersonal relationships, and participate in social events. Many factors can attribute to an individual’s social relations, including anxiety and exercise. Exercise has been known to decrease anxiety, which in turn can increase sociability as social anxiety (in layman’s terms: being scared to socialize and therefore having low sociability). BDNF in the prefrontal cortex is directly related to sociability whereas BDNF in the hippocampus is affected more-so by exercise. Corticosterone can also be affected by sociability and exercise, however the results are cofounding. Overall, we aim to test whether exercise effects sociability using the three-chamber sociability test as well as hippocampal BDNF levels, if sociability effects prefrontal cortex BDNF levels, and if exercise and/or sociability effects corticosterone levels.
