An omega-3 fatty acid plentiful in fish oil boosts the ability of
healthy young adults, whose brains are already at their peak levels of speed
and performance, to hold several items in memory for a short time, a study has
found. The study is the first to suggest that fish oil might enhance cognitive
performance in healthy people by boosting their working memory.
The latest research adds to evidence of fish oil's beneficial
neuropsychiatric effects: Supplementation with the docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)
in fish oil has been shown to improve the effectiveness of antidepressants, to
improve focus in those with attention deficits, to delay the development of
psychosis in those at risk of schizophrenia, and to help shore up declining
memory in healthy older adults. But the latest research failed to uncover how
the polyunsaturated fatty acid works to promote such wide-ranging benefits.
In the study, published Tuesday in the open-access journal Public Library of
Science (PLoS), 11 healthy Caucasian adults with an average age of 22 underwent
a six-month supplementation of their diet with fish oil (750 mg per day of DHA
and 930 mg per day of eicosapentaenoic acid, or EPA).
Researchers measured before-and-after levels of omega-3 acids in the
red-blood-cell membranes of subjects and put them through a battery of tests to
gauge the strength of their working -- or short-term -- memory. After six
months of supplementation with fish oil, the youthful subjects did 23% better
on a key challenge to working memory: the ability to recall, given a list of
several items, which one was mentioned three items back. The mystery of how
omega-3s work to rev up the brain, however, remains intact.
A key object of the research was to determine whether omega-3
supplementation works by boosting the availability and function of the
neurotransmitter dopamine in a key part of the brain. The study authors used
positron emission tomography (PET) scans to look deep into the forebrain, to a
region called the striatum, where dopamine is typically most plentiful. They
hoped to detect whether fish oil supplementation would increase dopamine levels
there, and whether such increases could be linked to better working-memory
performance.
The supplements did indeed boost levels of DHA and EPA in subjects'
blood, but not in their striata. Improved performance in subjects' working
memory was linked to changes in blood levels of the fatty acids in fish oil,
but that does little to explain how it works to improve cognition. The authors
of the study surmise that perhaps fish oil improves cognition by reducing
inflammation or boosting the strength of signals passing among brain cells, or
by improving the availability of dopamine in other parts of the brain.
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