A study led by Stefan Borgwardt, MD, PhD, from the Department of Psychiatry, University of Basel, Switzerland, showed that drinking a green tea extract strengthens memory performance. Researchers suggested that this finding may have implications for the treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders, including cognitive impairment.

The investigators wrote this is, “the first evidence for the putative beneficial effect of green tea on cognitive functioning, in particular, on working memory processing at the neural system level by suggesting changes in short-term plasticity of parieto-frontal brain connections.”

The investigators recruited healthy male volunteers who drank either a milk whey-based soft drink containing 27.5 grams of green tea extract or a similar drink without green tea.

The participants were given working memory assignments while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

The results of the fMRs showed increased connectivity between the parietal and the frontal cortex of the brain with the green tea extract. And, these findings corresponded positively with improvement in memory assignments.

“Our findings suggest that green tea might increase the short-term synaptic plasticity of the brain,” Dr. Borgwardt said in a statement.

Several past studies have suggested that green tea enhances cognitive functioning, yet until now, the neural mechanisms underlying these benefits had been unclear……. medscape.com   4/16/14

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