Gage’s colleague Henriette van Praag showed that the most effective contributor to increased proliferation of new neurons was the running wheel. After a month on the wheel, the mice had doubled the number of new neurons in the hippocampus. Mice don’t really run on running wheels, Gage told me; it only looks like they do, because the wheel provides so little resistance. Rather, they walk quickly. Gage’s theory is that in a natural setting, long-term fast walking would take the animal into a new, different environment that would require new learning, sparking what he calls “anticipatory
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fast walking/ jogging/ running promotes neurogenesis on principle since evolutionarily speaking it would only be done on to experience and not hone (resource managment). It does not nessecitate actual experience (see rats).
