Green Tea Promotes Cognitive Functioning, Study Finds

Lisa Franchi April 15, 2014

The powerful antioxidants in green tea have been scientifically proven to provide a wide range of health benefits ranging from stronger immunity to cancer prevention. Now, new research found that green tea may also have a beneficial role in enhancing cognitive functions, especially the working memory.

Green tea has been widely studied for its role in cancer prevention. And now, a growing body of research is showing a link between green tea consumption and better cognitive performance.

Green tea ingredients boost cognitive performance

In the new study, European researchers found that green tea extract increases the brain’s effective connectivity, meaning the causal influence that one brain area exerts over another. The findings, which were published in the journal Psychopharmacology, suggest that green tea may increase the short-term synaptic plasticity of the brain.

For the study, healthy male volunteers received a soft drink containing several grams of green tea extract before they solved working memory tasks. The scientists then analysed how this affected the brain activity of the men, using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

MRI scans show an increased connectivity between the parietal and the frontal cortex of the brain. These neuronal findings correlated positively with improvement in task performance of the participants.

Promising clinical implications

The research findings show promising implications on mental health. For instance, according to the researchers, modelling effective connectivity among frontal and parietal brain regions during working memory processing might help to assess the efficacy of green tea for the treatment of cognitive impairments in neuropsychiatric disorders such as dementia.

However, the neural mechanisms underlying this cognitive enhancing effect of green tea remained unknown and therefore, call for additional research.

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Green Tea Tied to Better Cognitive Functioning