Green tea and cocoa enhance cognition in Lymnaea

作者：Erin Swinton, Emily de Freitas, Cayley Swinton, Tamila Shymansky, Emily Hiles, Jack Zhang, Cailin M. Rothwell, Ken Lukowiak · 发表于：Communicative & Integrative Biology · 年份：2018 · DOI：10.1080/19420889.2018.1434390 · 被引用次数：26 · 研究领域：Medicinal Plants and Neuroprotection、Olfactory and Sensory Function Studies、Memory and Neural Mechanisms

A flavonoid, (-)-epicatechi (Epi), enhances long-term memory (LTM) formation in Lymnaea and reverses memory obstruction caused by stress. Many foods contain substantial amounts of Epi, (e.g. green tea and cocoa). In humans eating such foods may directly or indirectly enhance cognition. We directly test whether operant conditioning training Lymnaea in these natural foods result in the same effects as training snails in pure Epi. We found that exposure to products containing high concentrations of Epi (e.g. green tea and cocoa) during training enhanced memory formation and could even reverse a learning and memory deficit brought about by stress. Epi can be photo-inactivated by exposure to ultraviolet light. We found that following photo-inactivation of Epi, memory enhancement did not occur. Photo-inactivation of foods containing Epi (e,g. green tea) blocked their ability to enhance LTM. Our data are thus consistent with the hypothesis that dietary sources of Epi can have positive benefits on cognitive ability and be able to reverse memory aversive states.