BDNF and memory impairment: Lee et al. (2020) demonstrated that treadmill exercise can attenuate memory impairment in cerebral ischemia gerbils by activating the ERK-Akt-CREB-BDNF signaling pathway. Another study that used swimming as the exercise method observed a similar phenomenon (Zhang et al., 2018). Caveolin-1/VEGF/BDNF and BDNF/TrkB signaling pathways are also involved in the recovery of motor and cognitive function after MCAO (Shi et al., 2016; Chen et al., 2019).