Category: Memory

The group eating the superfruit had improved memory and better access to words and concepts.

Eating blueberries could help improve memory and cognitive function, a new study finds.

Researchers recruited 47 older adults with mild cognitive impairment.

Some of them had the equivalent of a cup of blueberries in powder form each day for 16 weeks.

Others had a placebo powder.

Professor Robert Krikorian, who led the research, explained the results:

“There was improvement in cognitive performance and brain function in those who had the blueberry powder compared with those who took the placebo.

The blueberry group demonstrated improved memory and improved access to words and concepts.

Our new findings corroborate those of previous animal studies and preliminary human studies, adding further support to the notion that blueberries can have a real benefit in improving memory and cognitive function in some older adults.”

A second study examined older people who thought their memories might be declining, but who did not have a diagnosis.

They were split into four groups with comparison groups for fish oil and various other combinations.

Professor Krikorian said:

“The results were not as robust as with the first study.

Cognition was somewhat better for those with powder or fish oil separately, but there was little improvement with memory.”

It could be that the blueberries are better for people with some impairments and not so effective for those who are more healthy, Professor Krikorian said.

The study was presented at the at the 251^st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

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The experience of distressing, intrusive memories was reduced by over a half.

Inhaling laughing gas after a traumatic event reduces the later intrusion of distressing memories, new research finds.

People who inhaled nitrous oxide experienced fewer intrusive thoughts a day later, the study found.

Dr Ravi Das, the study’s first author, explained:

“The day after they saw the film, the number of intrusions experienced by the group who received nitrous oxide fell by over a half.

By contrast, the decline in intrusions was much slower in the group who received air, where there was not a significant drop in intrusions until the fourth day.

We think that this is because nitrous oxide disrupts a process that helps permanent memories to form.”

The study involved participants watching a distressing video clip.

Afterwards, half were given air, the other half a mixture containing the laughing gas.

Dr Das said:

“On any given day your brain will be exposed to a huge amount of information, some important, but most trivial.

If information is ‘important’ enough to remember, for instance because it produces a strong emotional response, it is ‘tagged’ for storage.

The brain requires N-Methyl D-Aspartate (NMDA) receptors to tag information during the day, which is then filed for long-term storage while we sleep.

We know that nitrous oxide blocks NMDA receptors, so could interfere with tagging.

This might explain why the nitrous oxide group seemed to have weaker memories of the film the day after they watched it.”

Dr Sunjeev Kamboj, one of the study’s co-authors, said:

“Nitrous oxide is routinely used as a painkiller by paramedics and in A&E departments because it is safe and easy to administer.

Many people who end up in an ambulance will have undergone some form of psychological trauma, and our study suggests that the nitrous oxide is likely to be having some effect on how their brain processes it.

However, whether it helps to prevent symptoms of PTSD or makes them more likely may depend on how dissociated patients feel before they receive it.

Further research is now needed to determine whether dissociation similarly affects the response of trauma victims who receive nitrous oxide or other painkillers such as ketamine.

It is worth noting that our volunteers were given nitrous oxide continuously for half an hour, whereas the amount that hospital patients receive will vary significantly.

Some may only receive small doses in the ambulance whereas others could be breathing it on-and-off for hours in a hospital bed.

Any effects, positive or negative, are also likely to vary depending on the dose.

The amount of nitrous oxide used recreationally in a balloon, for example, would likely be too small to have a noticeable effect on memory formation.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Medicine (Das et al., 2016).

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The study adds further evidence for the cognitive disadvantages of this body type.

Overweight people have worse memories for times, places and specific emotions they have experienced, a new study finds.

The higher people’s BMI, researchers found, the worse their episodic memory.

Episodic memory is the collection of memories that occurred at a particular moment in time.

It is often contrasted with semantic memory, which is our general knowledge about the world.

The study adds further evidence for the cognitive disadvantages of being overweight.

Dr Lucy Cheke, who led the study, said:

“Understanding what drives our consumption and how we instinctively regulate our eating behaviour is becoming more and more important given the rise of obesity in society.

We know that to some extent hunger and satiety are driven by the balance of hormones in our bodies and brains, but psychological factors also play an important role — we tend to eat more when distracted by television or working, and perhaps to ‘comfort eat’ when we are sad, for example.

Increasingly, we’re beginning to see that memory — especially episodic memory, the kind where you mentally relive a past event — is also important.

How vividly we remember a recent meal, for example today’s lunch, can make a difference to how hungry we feel and how much we are likely to reach out for that tasty chocolate bar later on.”

The study tested 50 people with a range of BMIs from 18 to 51.

The normal range for BMI is 18-25, 25-30 is considered overweight and over 30 is obese.

Researchers found that the higher people’s BMI, the worse they performed on a memory task.

Dr Cheke said:

“We’re not saying that overweight people are necessarily more forgetful, but if these results are generalizable to memory in everyday life, then it could be that overweight people are less able to vividly relive details of past events — such as their past meals.

Research on the role of memory in eating suggests that this might impair their ability to use memory to help regulate consumption.

In other words, it is possible that becoming overweight may make it harder to keep track of what and how much you have eaten, potentially making you more likely to overeat.

The possibility that there may be episodic memory deficits in overweight individuals is of concern, especially given the growing evidence that episodic memory may have a considerable influence on feeding behaviour and appetite regulation.”

Dr Jon Simons, who co-authored the study, said:

By recognising and addressing these psychological factors head-on, not only can we come to understand obesity better, but we may enable the creation of interventions that can make a real difference to health and wellbeing.”

The study was published in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (Cheke et al., 2016).

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Tasty food linked to better performance on multiple cognitive tasks.

People who eat chocolate at least once a week perform better on multiple cognitive tasks, new research finds.

The study — covering 30 years — is one of the first to link regular chocolate consumption over the long-term with higher performance on multiple cognitive functions.

Chocolate could also help protect against age-related memory decline.

Dr Georgie Crichton, the study’s first authors, said:

“Chocolate and cocoa flavanols have been associated with improvements in a range of health complaints dating from ancient times, and have established cardiovascular benefits, but less is known about the effects of chocolate on neurocognition and behavior.”

Over 1,000 people included in the study had been tracked over 30 years.

A whole series of health and cognitive variables were measured.

The researchers found that regular chocolate eaters performed better on tests of working memory, reasoning and attention.

Dr Crichton explained:

“We examined whether habitual chocolate intake was associated with cognitive function (brain function – memory, concentration, reasoning, information processing), in nearly 1,000 individuals in the MSLS and found that those who ate chocolate at least once per week (or more), performed better on multiple cognitive tasks, compared to those who ate chocolate less than once per week.

With the exception of working memory, these relations were not attenuated with statistical control for cardiovascular, lifestyle and dietary factors.

This means that irrespective of factors including age, sex, education, cholesterol, glucose, blood pressure, total energy and alcohol intake, the relationship between chocolate intake and cognition remained significant.

Previous research has mostly examined the acute effects of increasing chocolate consumption on cognition, (ie performance) immediately after consuming a chocolate bar/cocoa drink.

Our research has looked at habitual intakes.”

Naturally, chocolate should be consumed as part of a healthy diet, Dr Crichton said:

“Of course chocolate intake should be considered within an overall healthy eating pattern, with consideration given to total energy intake and an individual’s energy needs.”

The study was published in the journal Appetite (Crichton et al., 2016).

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We can only recall a very small proportion of the memories we make each day.

New research finds that rewarding memories are recalled preferentially because the brain replays them automatically when we are at rest.

The brain prioritises rewards as they are important cues about future behaviour.

Professor Charan Ranganath, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Rewards help you remember things, because you want future rewards.

The brain prioritizes memories that are going to be useful for future decisions.”

In the study people looked at various pictures of objects on different backgrounds.

Some were associated with a higher reward for later recall.

When given a surprise memory test afterwards, unsurprisingly people were better at remembering the objects with higher levels of reward.

Dr Matthias Gruber, one of the study’s co-authors, said:

“Also, when an object was associated with high reward, people remembered better the particular background scene that was on the screen during scanning.”

The interesting finding came from a series of brain scans conducted just after people had looked at the objects, while resting.

These suggested that people were replaying the high-reward memories to help mentally fix them in place.

Their brains were doing this automatically, without volition, since they didn’t know a test was coming.

The people who replayed the memories the most did the best on the surprise test.

Professor Ranganath said:

“It speaks to a memory process that is normally hidden from us.

Are you remembering what you really need to know?

It could depend on what your brain does while you are at rest.”

The study was published in the journal Neuron (Gruber et al., 2016).

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New research suggests people’s cognitive abilities are affected by the seasons.

Brain scans show that people’s short-term memory is generally best in fall (autumn) and worst in spring.

In mid-December, though, people’s attention skills are at their lowest ebb.

Attention doesn’t come up to full strength until June.

Dr Gilles Vandewalle, one of the study’s authors, said that the causes are likely down to multiple factors, but:

“…we may be tuned to lower brain activity in winter, and that could cause changes in brain activity.

But in modern society we are similarly active throughout the year.”

It could also be that people who experience seasonally affected disorder may be particularly vulnerable to changes in cognition over the year.

Brain Scans Reveal Why Up To One in Six People Get SAD in Winter

The new research had 28 men and women visit the lab at different times of the year to take various tests.

Both brain scans and behavioural tests were used.

Only the brain scans showed the differences, not the behavioural tests.

The study was published in the journal PNAS (Meyer et al., 2016).

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Certain diets can damage learning and memory, but the brain can recover, a new study finds.

High-fat diets have long been linked to all kinds of psychological problems, including depression, anxiety and learning and memory deficits.

Now, research on mice has found that memory and learning problems disappear over time, even while maintaining the high-fat diet.

In the study, some of the mice were fed a high-fat diet.

Compared with another group fed a normal diet, after three months they showed severe problems with spatial memory.

But, after 12 months, their brains seemed to have adjusted to the high-fat diet.

High-Fat Diet May Disturb a Range of Thoughts And Feelings

Ms Erica Underwood, one of the study’s author, said:

“Other factors behind the impairment must be recovering in the long term.

That’s the beautiful thing about the brain.

It can often recover or find alternate routes to allow normal function in spite of impairment.”

While the mice’s brains coped with the diet, their bodies fared less well.

The high-fat diet caused obesity and the males developed the symptoms of type-2 diabetes.

Professor Lucien Thompson, who co-authored the study, said:

“We saw that the males’ brains, as well as bodies, became insulin-insensitive.

They were producing more insulin because of the fatty diet, but not enough to cover blood glucose surges after an oral dose of glucose.

And while insulin normally stimulates hippocampal neurons, high-fat diet males stopped responding to insulin.”

Ms Underwood concluded:

“For the first time in human history we have large numbers of toddlers who are severely overweight.

It’s unprecedented.

With this new type of physiology we’re seeing, we don’t really know what’s going to happen to these children 20 or 50 years from now.”

The study was published in the journal Neural Plasticity (Underwood & Thompson, 2015).

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In a few seconds our brains can play out events that would take hours or days at real time.

The imagination has an amazing ability to compress time.

In a few seconds our brains can play out events that would take hours or days at real time.

It’s an ability we take for granted and one we need to help plan for the future.

The key to how we are able to do this is a type of brain wave which is separate to the one we use for remembering real-time experiences.

Brain cells use a series of different electrical frequencies to communicate with each other.

It’s like the way radio waves are used to communicate over long distances.

One of these frequencies, however, allows the brain to play back memories or plan future events in fast forward.

Dr Laura Colgin, one of the study’s authors, explained:

“The reason we’re excited about it is that we think this mechanism can help explain how you can imagine a sequence of events you’re about to do in a time-compressed manner.

You can plan out those events and think about the sequences of actions you’ll do.

And all of that happens on a faster time scale when you’re imagining it than when you actually go and do those things.”

It’s known that fast gamma rhythms are used to encode memories happening right now, in real time.

The researchers discovered that slow gamma rhythms are used to retrieve memories and plan for the future in fast forward.

Naturally, the extra speed causes the memories and plans to lose resolution.

It’s the same as when you compress a file on the computer and it loses some information along the way.

The findings could also have implications for mental illness, Dr Colgin thinks:

“Maybe they are transmitting their own imagined thoughts on the wrong frequency, the one usually reserved for things that are really happening.

That could have terrible consequences.”

The study was published in the journal Neuron (Zheng et al., 2016).

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Study of 3,718 older people found that, cognitively, some people’s brains were 5 years younger.

Eating vegetables — but not fruit — helps preserve memory, research finds.

The study of 3,718 people over 65 living in Chicago asked how often people ate particular foods and administered cognitive tests.

Professor Martha Clare Morris, who led the study, explained the results:

“Compared to people who consumed less than one serving of vegetables a day, people who ate at least 2.8 servings of vegetables a day saw their rate of cognitive change slow by roughly 40 percent.

This decrease is equivalent to about 5 years of younger age.”

Green leafy vegetables showed the strongest association with a better memory.

Older people in the study got the greatest benefit from eating more vegetables.

More than two servings of vegetables per day was linked to the slowest rates of cognitive decline in older people.

Professor Morris was surprised to find there was no link between fruit consumption and a preserved memory:

“This was unanticipated and raises several questions.

It may be due to vegetables containing high amounts of vitamin E, which helps lowers the risk of cognitive decline.

Vegetables, but not fruits, are also typically consumed with added fats such as salad dressings, and fats increase the absorption of vitamin E.

Further study is required to understand why fruit is not associated with cognitive change.”

The study was published in the journal Neurology (Morris et al., 2006).

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