Cocoa Flavanols May Reverse Age-Related Memory Decline Liam Davenport October 28, 2014 Age-related memory decline may be reversed with high doses of naturally occurring cocoa flavanols, US researchers have discovered in findings that establish the dentate gyrus as central to cognitive decline. Together, these results provide evidence that age-related changes in the DG [dentate gyrus] observed in aging humans underlie and drive a hippocampal-dependent component of cognitive aging, the investigators write. Discussing the motivation for the study, lead researcher Scott Small, MD, Boris and Rose Katz Professor of Neurology and director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in the Taub Institute at Columbia University Medical Center, in New York City, told Medscape Medical News: Over the last 10 years or so, there have been a lot of observational studies that have suggested that the dentate gyrus, which is a region within the hippocampus, is linked to aging and age-related memory decline. However, he noted: Thats just been correlational, so the real motivation here was to rely on flavanols, which previous mouse studies have established increase function selectively in the dentate gyrus, and see if we could show that [effect] in humans, in an effort to establish a causal link between the dentate gyrus and aging. The study was published online October 26 in Nature Neuroscience. Significant Impact For the study, the team developed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique that utilized steady-state contrast enhancement to create isolated cerebral blood volume (CBV) maps of the hippocampus. This allows the data to be combined into a single, three-dimensional snapshot, rather than as slices. Comparing the precise patterns observed in 35 healthy individuals aged 21 to 65 years with those recorded from patients in the preclinical stages of Alzheimers disease, they were able to develop a precise pattern of age-related dentate gyrus function. They then combined a computerized modification of the Benton Visual Retention Test, termed ModBent, for use in healthy individuals with a specifically designed task that built on previous research indicating that the dentate gyrus is involved in the pattern separation of visually similar objects. In a series of experiments with healthy volunteers, the researchers were able to confirm that task performance declined with normal aging, and through use of CBV-fMRI, that this cognitive tasks function was localized to the site of age-related dentate gyrus dysfunction. In the second part of the study, 41 healthy but sedentary individuals aged 50 to 69 years were randomly assigned to either a high flavanol intake of 900 mg cocoa flavanols and 138 mg of (–)- epicatechin per day, with or without aerobic exercise, or a low flavanol intake of 10 mg cocoa flavanols and
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 22:04:18 +0000
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