from Columbia University Medical Center
As we age, we typically show some decline in cognitive abilities, including learning and remembering things. Age-related memory decline is different from the devastating memory impairment of Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center gave dietary cocoa flavanols to provide the first direct evidence that one part of age-related memory decline in humans is caused by changes in a specific region of the brain. Improvements were seen in brain images and in memory tests after volunteers consumed cocoa flavanols. Dr. Scott Small said if a participant in the high flavanol group had the memory of a typical sixty year old at the beginning of the study, they acquired the memory of a typical thirty to forty year old. He says cocoa flavanols are not the same as chocolate and not to increase our consumption of chocolate to get the same effect.