DHA

One more study shows “brain supplements” don’t work to enhance brain health and function

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Omega 3 supplementsWhy Can’t Fish Oil Sup­ple­ments Keep Our Brains Sharp? (NPR):

“…why is it that a new study of old­er women pub­lished in the jour­nal Neu­rol­o­gy finds that omega-3s may not ben­e­fit think­ing skills or help fend off cog­ni­tive decline?…As study author Eric Ammann, of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa, points out in an email, “most ran­dom­ized tri­als of omega‑3 sup­ple­ments have not found an effect on cog­ni­tive func­tion.” [Read more…] about One more study shows “brain sup­ple­ments” don’t work to enhance brain health and function

SharpBrains Council Monthly Insights: How will we assess, enhance and repair cognition across the lifespan?

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When you think of how the PC has altered the fab­ric of soci­ety, per­mit­ting instant access to infor­ma­tion and automat­ing process­es beyond our wildest dreams, it is instruc­tive to con­sid­er that much of this progress was dri­ven by Moore’s law. Halv­ing the size of semi­con­duc­tor every 18 months catal­ysed an expo­nen­tial accel­er­a­tion in performance.

Why is this sto­ry rel­e­vant to mod­ern neu­ro­science and the work­ings of the brain? Because trans­for­ma­tive tech­no­log­i­cal progress aris­es out of choice and the actions of indi­vid­u­als who see poten­tial for change, and we may well be on the verge of such progress. [Read more…] about Sharp­Brains Coun­cil Month­ly Insights: How will we assess, enhance and repair cog­ni­tion across the lifespan?

SharpBrains Council Weekly Update: 54 Members, Events, Industry, Research, Ideas

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Let me pro­vide an overview of the great things going on with the Sharp­Brains Coun­cil for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion — start­ing this week, we will share a brief update like this every Fri­day to main­tain Sharp­Brains col­leagues and read­ers informed. Please note that all links below require access to the Coun­cil’s online platform.

Coun­cil Membership
We have 54 Coun­cil Mem­bers right now (47 are already active in the Coun­cil’s online plat­form). To help Mem­bers quick­ly see who we all are and what we are inter­est­ed in, there is a Mem­ber List avail­able in the Library.
This week, based on lev­el of Coun­cil par­tic­i­pa­tion and on hav­ing a nice pro­file pic, we are fea­tur­ing 7 Coun­cil Mem­bers: Pas­cale Mich­e­lon, Philip Toman, Jamie Wil­son, Luc Beau­doin, Joshua Stein­er­man, Adam Gaz­za­ley and Sher­rie All. [Read more…] about Sharp­Brains Coun­cil Week­ly Update: 54 Mem­bers, Events, Indus­try, Research, Ideas

No effects of omega‑3 supplements on Alzheimer’s symptoms

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The L.A. Times reports today the neg­a­tive results of the lat­est ran­dom­ized tri­al test­ing the effects of DHA sup­ple­ments on Alzheimer’s symp­toms (DHA is an omega‑3 fat­ty acid).

The study … exam­ined 402 peo­ple with mild to mod­er­ate Alzheimer’s. They were ran­dom­ly assigned to take 2 grams a day of omega‑3 cap­sules con­tain­ing docosa­hexaenoic acid (or DHA) or a place­bo cap­sule. The par­tic­i­pants were fol­lowed for 18 months, and their cog­ni­tive and func­tion­al abil­i­ties were reassessed. They also under­went MRI to look at the brain.

There was no ben­e­fit seen in the patients tak­ing omega‑3 fat­ty-acid sup­ple­ments in either brain vol­ume or cog­ni­tive function.

Com­ments: Does this study mean that DHA or omega‑3 in gen­er­al are not good for the brain? No! This study sug­gests that tak­ing DHA sup­ple­ments after Alzheimer’s diag­no­sis is not help­ful. Pri­or evi­dence shows that omega‑3 con­sump­tion (espe­cial­ly DHA) long before the onset of Alzheimer’s symp­toms reduces the risk of devel­op­ing the dis­ease. Indeed, sev­er­al stud­ies have shown that eat­ing fish (the pri­ma­ry source in our diet of omega‑3 fat­ty acids) is asso­ci­at­ed with a reduced risk of cog­ni­tive decline or dementia.

The authors of the JAMA study also spec­u­late that DHA sup­ple­ments could be used as a treat­ment for peo­ple who have not yet been diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s but are already devel­op­ing demen­tia pathol­o­gy in their brain: “Indi­vid­u­als inter­me­di­ate between healthy aging and demen­tia, such as those with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, might derive ben­e­fit from DHA sup­ple­men­ta­tion, although fur­ther study will be nec­es­sary to test this hypoth­e­sis.” 

Can food improve brain health?

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In oth­er words, may some foods be specif­i­cal­ly good for brain function?

For a great in-depth review of the effects of food on the brain you can check out Fer­nan­do Gomez-Pinil­la’s recent arti­cle in Nature Reviews Neu­ro­science (ref­er­ence below). Here is an overview of the state off the research.

Sev­er­al com­po­nents of diet seem to have a pos­i­tive effect on brain function.

Omega‑3 fat­ty acids

These acids are nor­mal con­stituents of cell mem­branes and are essen­tial for nor­mal brain func­tion. Omega‑3 fat­ty acids can be found in fish (salmon), kiwi, and wal­nuts. Docosa­hexaenoic acid, or DHA, is the most abun­dant omega‑3 fat­ty acid in cell mem­branes in the brain. The human body pro­duces DHA but not enough. So we are depen­dent on the DHA that we get from what we eat.

A ran­dom­ized dou­ble-blind con­trolled tri­al (which means seri­ous­ly con­duct­ed sci­en­tif­ic study) is cur­rent­ly look­ing at the effect of tak­ing omega‑3 fat­ty acids on chil­dren’s per­for­mance at school in Eng­land. Pre­lim­i­nary results (Port­wood, 2006) sug­gest that [Read more…] about Can food improve brain health?