Are you feeling stressed? Every person is encouraged to go for a run. This suggestion has been offered to everyone, and there is some factual evidence behind it. Despite this, people who have been through traumatic experiences say they have not tried it yet. A study from Germany points out the unfortunate truth that the run never occurs, but why is the question.
In his talk, Trevor Buhr describes his work on how stress leaves animals less willing to exercise. In the study published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, adult male rats received a single session of 0, 50, or 100 uncomfortable tail shocks. They were then given unrestricted access to the running wheel, which is known to be loved by rats. The animals that were stressed were seen to run two to four times less, a gap that never shortened over the 9-week experimentation period. Depression-like behaviors in this model slowly disappear within about 72 hours, so the running deficit looks like its own lasting change. Eight days after stress, the experiment found that a 15-minute treadmill run failed to raise dopamine turnover in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, but it did in unstressed rats, and the stressed rat striatum ran slightly low on dopamine.
In March 2026, Neuroscience News reported on research conducted by the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, published in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging (Zehirlioglu et al. 2026). They performed brain imaging of adults who experienced maltreatment and/or neglect before age 18 and asked them to report how active they were in their entire life. For adults who were not highly active, increased levels of childhood adversity showed brain connections related to stress, such as the amygdala, hippocampus, and anterior cingulate cortex. That is to say that people who suffered fewer problems were more inclined to experience high stress since it was something new for them. Highly active adults with greater levels of adversity were considered resilient. Maximum effect could be observed when an adult performed around 150 to 390 minutes of physical activity weekly, where most of their activity was in the cerebellum and motor networks.
Putting the two studies side by side, their studies are slightly different. The German study results show that survivors who keep active tend to have more resilient brain structures. Buhr's collaboration with rats suggests trauma wears down the very things that help people stay active. Dopamine rewards effort and muscles that can keep activity going. Both studies point out the hippocampus and the frontal regions involved in efforts for motor control. Unfortunately, the German study is based on correlation and depends on people recalling how active they were their entire lives. This is not exactly accurate, as it relies on people recalling how active they were and connecting it to the dopamine levels in the brain. Additionally, it is also hard to check the differences between those who remained active and those who did not. Buhr's rat reinforces the second idea because if activity is seen to directly reduce the activity levels, then perhaps the active survivors are the ones who were least affected by trauma.
Overall, none of this means exercise is helpful. Making people who have gone through trauma exercise is to ask them to push against a reward signal that is no longer operating. Programs that prioritize starting small might be important to these individuals. Alas, neither study really pushed the difference in sex. Buhr's rats were primarily male, while the German participants were primarily women. Additionally, running distances among the stressed animals varied greatly. This discrepancy shows that there is much nuance to the data, and it can be an issue when coming to conclusions.
References:
Buhr, Trevor J., et al. "The Persistence of Stress-Induced Physical Inactivity in Rats: An Investigation of Central Monoamine Neurotransmitters and Skeletal Muscle Oxidative Stress." Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, vol. 17, 2023, p. 1169151, https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1169151.
Zehirlioglu, Lemye, et al. "Lifetime Physical Activity Moderates the Neural Effects of Childhood Adversity on Resting State Functional Connectivity." Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 2026, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2026.01.006.
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