Magnesium Supplement Helps Boost Brainpower
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ScienceDaily (Feb. 2, 2010) — New research finds that an increase in brain
magnesium improves learning and memory in young and old rats. The study,
published in the January 28th issue of the journal Neuron, suggests that
increasing magnesium intake may be a valid strategy to enhance cognitive
abilities and supports speculation that inadequate levels of magnesium impair
cognitive function, leading to faster deterioration of memory in aging humans.
Diet can have a significant impact on cognitive capacity. Identification
of dietary factors which have a positive influence on synapses, the sites of
communication between neurons, might help to enhance learning and memory
and prevent their decline with age and disease. Professor Guosong Liu,
Director of the Center for Learning and Memory at Tsinghua University in
Beijing, China, led a study examining whether increased levels of one such dietary
supplement, magnesium, boosts brain power.
"Magnesium is essential for the proper functioning of many tissues in the
body, including the brain and, in an earlier study, we demonstrated that
magnesium promoted synaptic plasticity in cultured brain cells," explains Dr.
Liu. "Therefore it was tempting to take our studies a step further and
investigate whether an increase in brain magnesium levels enhanced cognitive
function in animals."
Because it is difficult to boost brain magnesium levels with traditional
oral supplements, Dr. Liu and colleagues developed a new magnesium compound,
magnesium-L-
the brain via dietary supplementation. They used MgT to increase magnesium
in rats of different ages and then looked for behavioral and cellular
changes associated with memory.
"We found that increased brain magnesium enhanced many different forms of
learning and memory in both young and aged rats," says Dr. Liu. A close
examination of cellular changes associated with memory revealed an increase in
the number of functional synapses, activation of key signaling molecules
and an enhancement of short- and long-term synaptic processes that are
crucial for learning and memory.
The authors note that the control rats in this study had a normal diet
which is widely accepted to contain a sufficient amount of magnesium, and that
the observed effects were due to elevation of magnesium to levels higher
than provided by a normal diet.
"Our findings suggest that elevating brain magnesium content via
increasing magnesium intake might be a useful new strategy to enhance cognitive
abilities," explains Dr. Liu. "Moreover, half the population of industrialized
countries has a magnesium deficit, which increases with aging. This may
very well contribute to age-dependent memory decline; increasing magnesium
intake might prevent or reduce such decline."
Journal Reference:
Inna Slutsky, Nashat Abumaria, Long-Jun Wu, Chao Huang, Ling Zhang, Bo Li,
Xiang Zhao, Arvind Govindarajan, Ming-Gao Zhao, Min Zhuo, Susumu Tonegawa
and Guosong Liu. Enhancement of Learning and Memory by Elevating Brain
Magnesium. Neuron, Jan. 28, 2010
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