Chocolate Improves Memory

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 chocolateIn case anyone needed another reason to love chocolate, a new study suggests that a natural compound found in cocoa, tea and some vegetables can reverse age-related memory loss.

The findings suggest that the compound increases connectivity and, subsequently, blood flow in a region of the brain critical to memory, the researchers said.

The study – published online Sunday in Nature Neuroscience and partly financed by a chocolate company – found that flavanols reverse mild memory loss in older adults. Using brain scans and memory tests, the latest study built on previous work showing that flavanols extracted from cocoa beans had improved neuronal connections in mice’s dentate gyrus, a part of the brain involved in memory formation.

But hold that chocolate bar. The researchers also warn that the compound found in cocoa exists only in minuscule amounts in the average chocolate bar compared with the amount used in the study, so gorging on chocolate in the name of health and improving one’s memory could backfire.

“It would make a lot of people happy, but it would also make them unhealthy,” Scott A. Small, a professor of neurology and director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the Taub Institute at Columbia University Medical Center, said Friday.

Small said that even more important, the new study offers the first direct evidence that memory deteriorates with age because of changes in the dentate gyrus, a region of the hippocampus. Previous studies had shown a link between changes in this region of the brain and normal, age-related memory loss, but the Columbia University study asserts a causal link.

Read more at the Washington Post.

{Matzav.com Newscenter}


4 COMMENTS

  1. If the compound found in cocoa for improving memory exists only in minuscule amounts in the average chocolate bar, we should eat several of them a day; after all it’s not only for strengthening the brain. It is good for the heart, good for your teeth, good for your skin, reduces diabetes… Wait a minute, I’m running to bring a few to munch on as I write.

  2. Can someone please develope a flavanois vitamin pill that is concentrated and effective in boosting and impeoving one’s memory?

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