Cognitive Labs

A natural compound found in blueberries, tea, grapes, and cocoa enhances memory in mice, according to newly published research. This effect increased further when mice also exercised regularly.

"This finding is an important advance because it identifies a single natural chemical with memory-enhancing effects, suggesting that it may be possible to optimize brain function by combining exercise and dietary supplementation," says Mark Mattson, PhD, at the National Institute on Aging.

The compound, epicatechin, is one of a group of chemicals known as flavonols and has been shown previously to improve cardiovascular function in people and increase blood flow in the brain. Flavonols are found in some chocolate. Henriette van Praag, PhD, of the Salk Institute, and colleagues there and at Mars, Inc., showed that the combination of exercise and a diet with epicatechin also promoted structural and functional changes in the dentate gyrus, a part of the brain involved in the formation of learning and memory. The findings, published in the May 30 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, suggest that a diet rich in flavonols may help reduce the incidence or severity of neurodegenerative disease or cognitive disorders related to aging.

Van Praag and her team compared mice fed a typical diet with those fed a diet supplemented with epicatechin. Half the mice in each group were allowed to run on a wheel for two hours each day. After a month, the mice were trained to find a platform hidden in a pool of water. Those that both exercised and ate the epicatechin diet remembered the location of the platform longer than the other mice.

read more at Physorg

Labels: blueberries, early onset alzheimers, flavenols, mice

McGill University researchers have discovered that a mutant gene improves the long-term memory of laboratory mice, a discovery they hope will one day lead to a better quality of life for Alzheimer’s patients and others suffering from memory impairment.

"We now have an excellent target for the development of new drugs that would be capable of doing the same thing that we did, which could be of great benefit to an aging population with memory loss," said Dr. Mauro Costa-Mattioli, a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Nahum Sonenberg, James McGill Professor of Translational Control Mechanisms in the Department of Biochemistry and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Scholar at McGill.

Using a mutant gene that regulates the switch from short to long-term memory in mice, Dr. Costa-Mattioli and his colleagues were able to manipulate biochemical reactions in the animals’ brains to control their memory and cognitive behaviour – both extending and reducing long-term memory functions. Their findings appear in the April 6 issue of the journal Cell.

To study spatial memory, the researchers used such tests as the Morris water maze, in which a mouse is placed in a pool of water containing a hidden platform located just below the surface. Visual cues are placed around the pool and over a number of trials, researchers analyze how quickly the mice remember how to locate the hidden platform using these cues. In this and other tests, the researchers found that the mice with the altered gene exhibited enhanced learning and memory.

Drs. Mauro Costa-Mattioli and Sonenberg conducted the research in collaboration with Dr. Jean-Claude Lacaille of Université de Montréal, Dr. Kobi Rosenblum of the University of Haifa and Dr. Randal Kaufman of the University of Michigan, as well as a team of colleagues from McGill, consisting of Drs. Jerry Pelletier, Wayne Sossin, Claudio Cuello, Kresimir Krnjevic and Karim Nader, a McGill psychology professor best known for his discovery that the impact of traumatic memories can be lessened with drug treatment.

"Our next step is to look at many different compounds to start searching for a drug that can be designed to improve long-term memory in humans," said Dr. Sonenberg.

Labels: alzheimers, McGill, memory, mice