Green tea boosts your brain
Green tea is said to have many putative positive effects on health. Now, researchers at the University of Basel are reporting first evidence that green tea extract enhances the cognitive functions, in particular the working memory. The Swiss findings suggest promising clinical implications for the treatment of cognitive impairments in psychiatric disorders such as dementia. The academic journal Psychopharmacology has published their results.
In the past the main ingredients of green tea have been thoroughly studied in cancer research. Recently, scientists have also been inquiring into the beverage’s positive impact on the human brain. Different studies were able to link green tea to beneficial effects on the cognitive performance. However, the neural mechanisms underlying this cognitive enhancing effect of green tea remained unknown.
Better memory
In a new study, the researcher teams of Prof. Christoph Beglinger from the University Hospital of Basel and Prof. Stefan Borgwardt from the Psychiatric University Clinics found that green tea extract increases the brain’s effective connectivity, meaning the causal influence that one brain area exerts over another. This effect on connectivity also led to improvement in actual cognitive performance: Subjects tested significantly better for working memory tasks after the admission of green tea extract.
For the study healthy male volunteers received a soft drink containing several grams of green tea extract before they solved working memory tasks. The scientists then analyzed how this affected the brain activity of the men using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The MRI showed increased connectivity between the parietal and the frontal cortex of the brain. These neuronal findings correlated positively with improvement in task performance of the participants. «Our findings suggest that green tea might increase the short-term synaptic plasticity of the brain», says Borgwardt.
Clinical implications
The research results suggest promising clinical implications: Modeling effective connectivity among frontal and parietal brain regions during working memory processing might help to assess the efficacy of green tea for the treatment of cognitive impairments in neuropsychiatric disorders such as dementia.
Green tea may help fight Alzheimer’s
Scientists have found that a natural component of green tea may eventually provide a way of curing Alzheimer’s disease (Rushworth et al., 2013).
Early-stage research has found that a component of green tea - epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) - can disrupt the build up of plaques in the brain, which is what causes the cells to die.
Eventually this may help lead to a cure for the crippling disease.
###
Green tea may be a ‘brain booster’
“Looking for a morning brain boost? Forget coffee - green tea holds the key for men”, suggests the Daily Mail.
Earlier this month we were told that green tea helps prevent bowel cancer, now new research suggests it could aid memory and cognition (thinking ability).
This headline stems from a small study involving brain scans on 12 healthy males. The researchers were using a type of scan known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which provides a real-time continuous scan of blood flow inside the brain. The idea underpinning fMRI is that increases in blood flow in certain areas of the brain correspond to neural activity.
The researchers found that drinking a soft drink laced with green tea extract appeared to increase blood flow to a part of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The DLPFC is thought to be involved in cognitive tasks such as long-term memory, reasoning, and comprehension.
However, it also showed that this did not affect performance in a working memory task that volunteers performed each time their brains were scanned.
###
Olivia Poisson
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
University of Basel