chocolate and memory, this time reviewing the reference
chocolate (actually dietary epicatechin) does increase the dentate gyrus function on functional MRI and improve cognitive testing in only 3 months (see chocolate and cognition. nature neuro 2014 in dropbox, or doi:10.1038/nn.3850). a couple of other observations from the paper. --data in mice show a synergy between flavanols and aerobic exercise in enhancing dendritic spine density in the dentate gyrus --this increase in both function (mice have improved cognitive performance with flavanols) and structure occur in association with an increase in capillary density in the dentate. --the researchers developed a cognitive test, which mostly was looking at a large series of complex images, then 1 second after each image they asked which of 2 similar objects was present in the complex image, timing the subjects’ responses. Each time the test was performed, different images were used. --they tested this cognitive eval in undergraduates and in healthy subjects aged 21-6...