cognition tagged posts

People who eat a Mediterranean-style diet — particularly one rich in green leafy vegetables and low in red meat — are more likely to stay mentally sharp in later life, a study shows.

Closely adhering to a Mediterranean diet was associated with higher scores on a range of memory and thinking tests among adults in their late 70s, the research found.

The study found no link, however, between the Mediterranean-style diet and better brain health. Markers of healthy brain ageing — such as greater grey or white matter volume, or fewer white matter lesions — did not differ between those regularly eating a Mediterranean diet and those who did not.

These latest findings suggest that this primarily plant-based diet may have benefits for cognitive functioning as we get older, researchers...

The brains of healthy adults recovered faster from a mild vascular challenge and performed better on complex tests if the participants consumed cocoa flavanols beforehand, researchers report in the journal Scientific Reports. In the study, 14 of 18 participants saw these improvements after ingesting the flavanols.

Previous studies have shown that eating foods rich in flavanols can benefit vascular function, but this is the first to find a positive effect on brain vascular function and cognitive performance in young healthy adults, said Catarina Rendeiro, a researcher and lecturer in nutritional sciences at the University of Birmingham who led the research with University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign psychology professors Monica Fabiani and Gabriele Gratton.

“Flavanols are sma...

Pistachios are among the nuts the improve brain function. Credit: Loma Linda University Health

A new study has found that eating nuts on a regular basis strengthens brainwave frequencies associated with cognition, healing, learning, memory and other key brain functions. In the study titled “Nuts and brain: Effects of eating nuts on changing electroencephalograph brainwaves,” researchers found that some nuts stimulated some brain frequencies more than others.  Some nuts stimulated some brain frequencies more than others. Pistachios, for instance, produced the greatest gamma wave response, which is critical for enhancing cognitive processing, information retention, learning, perception and REM sleep...

The Salk team expanded upon their previous development of a drug candidate J147, which takes a different tack by targeting Alzheimer’s major risk factor—old age. In the new work, the team showed that the drug candidate worked well in a mouse model of aging not typically used in Alzheimer’s research. When these mice were treated with J147, they had better memory and cognition, healthier blood vessels in the brain and other improved physiological features.

“Initially, the impetus was to test this drug in a novel animal model that was more similar to 99% of Alzheimer’s cases,” says Prof Antonio Currais. “We did not predict we’d see this sort of anti-aging effect, but J147 made old mice look like they were young, based upon a number of physiological parameters.”

Alzheimer’s is the 3rd ...