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Food for Thought: Studies
Probe Role of Minerals
in Brain Function
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Technician Annie Hwang (left),
chemist Manuel Tengonciang, and
research associate Leslie Woodhouse
prepare blood and urine samples for
iron and zinc analysis on an inductively
coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometer.
(K9631-1)
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If you've been having trouble
concentrating, maybe you're not getting enough of the nutrients your brain
needs.
Studies by ARS physiologist Mary J.
Kretsch and colleagues are revealing new clues about the roles essential
nutrients apparently play in keeping our mental capacities—or what
scientists call "cognitive function"—up to par. She is based at
the ARS Western Human Nutrition Research Center in Davis, California.
Mental capabilities, such as memory and the ability to concentrate, are
essential to carrying out responsibilities at home, work, and school. In the
Information Age, especially, our mental productivity is critical to our success
at work. |
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Yet, much of the research that links inadequate nutrition to mental performance
has been done with children. And as Kretsch points out, "those studies
have, for example, linked poor nutrition to impaired learning at school. Our
work is with adults and focuses not on outright shortages of essential
nutrients, but instead on marginal deficiencies." |
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Physiologist Mary Kretsch
(right) and registered
dietician Monique Derricote
demonstrate the Bakan
Vigilance Task, which
measures the ability
to sustain attention.
(K9630-1)
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Iron Decline Shortens Attention
Span
In a 20-week study with eight healthy men, aged 27 to 47 years, Kretsch looked
at the relationship between iron and the volunteers' ability to concentrate.
"We saw that a low score for volunteers' attention span corresponded with
a subsequent decline in iron levels in the body."
In an earlier study with 14 obese but otherwise healthy female volunteers, aged
25 to 42 years, Kretsch and colleagues had documented a similar change in
ability to focus. The 21-week experiment showed that volunteers with borderline
anemia, as measured by blood hemoglobin, were less able to concentrate than
volunteers with higher hemoglobin. However, because blood hemoglobin can be
influenced by nutrients other than iron, Kretsch measured other indicators of
iron status, as well. Those tests also showed that iron status declined for
those volunteers with the lower ability to concentrate. |
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Her studies are the first—in
healthy adults—to link a decrease in iron with a decline in attention
span. Kretsch says the findings suggest that decreased ability to concentrate
may be an early indicator that an individual's iron levels are declining.
"Somewhat the same trend has been observed in studies elsewhere with
children. It's been found, for instance, that children with iron deficiency
anemia have a short attention span," Kretsch says."
We plan followup studies, with healthy adults, to investigate whether iron
supplementation can reverse this cognitive impairment. We would also like to
learn more about the mechanisms at work here."
Kretsch plans to recruit premenopausal women as volunteers for these next
studies. That's because iron deficiency and iron-deficiency anemia are still
relatively common in the United States among women of that age group, as well
as among adolescent females.
Kretsch and co-workers measured volunteers' ability to concentrate by giving
them a 6-minute-long standardized test. "We presented a continuous,
fast-moving stream of single-digit numbers on a computer screen," she
says. "We asked the volunteers to quickly press the space bar on the
computer keyboard whenever they saw either three even or three odd numbers in a
row. That may sound easy, but it's actually a demanding task that requires
paying attention."
Low Zinc Leads to Faulty Memory
Kretsch and co-researchers also explored the interaction of brainpower and
another nutrient, zinc. She worked with the same eight men who participated in
the iron tests.
In one test of mental function, called verbal memory, the scientists evaluated
the volunteers' ability to remember everyday words. "We showed the men a
list of words on a computer screen. Then, we presented these words again, this
time intermingled with new ones, and asked the volunteers to press a key
whenever they recognized a word from the first list," says Kretsch.
Preliminary results showed that, after only 3 weeks on a low-zinc regimen, many
of the volunteers' ability to recall the words slowed. The men who slowed the
most in this test also had the greatest decrease in blood levels of zinc.
Several weeks later, while still in the low-zinc phase of the study, some of
these volunteers more quickly identified what they thought were the correct
words, but speed came at the expense of accuracy. "This trade-off of speed
for accuracy," says Kretsch, "doesn't represent an improvement in
their ability to adjust to a low-zinc regimen." The speed-for-accuracy
response agreed with findings of a 1984 zinc study of healthy men, conducted by
researchers at the ARS Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center.
"In all studies," Kretsch reports, "cognitive changes were
evident before biochemical changes occurred. This supports previous iron and
zinc work with primates, which showed that cognitive changes can occur well
ahead of other indicators of decreased iron or zinc. We think these cognitive
tasks might prove to be a simple way to identify people who aren't getting
enough iron or zinc—well before any signs show up in biochemical samples
such as blood or urine."
Kretsch's collaborators in the iron study included psychologist Michael W.
Green of the Neurosciences Research Institute at Aston University, Birmingham,
England, and—in the zinc study—psychologist James G. Penland of the
ARS Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center. Among Kretsch's other
co-investigators are Janet C. King, director of the ARS Western Human Nutrition
Research Center; and Alice K.H. Fong, Herman L. Johnson, and Barbara
Sutherland, formerly with the center.
The researchers have published their findings in the European Journal of
Clinical Nutrition, the FASEB Journal, and in a book, Trace
Elements in Man and Animals.—By
Marcia
Wood, Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.
This research is part of Human Nutrition, an ARS National Program (#107)
described on the World Wide Web at http://www.nps.ars.usda.gov.
Mary J. Kretsch is with the
USDA-ARS Western Human Nutrition Research
Center, One Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616; phone (530) 752-4171. |
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"Food for Thought: Studies Probe Role of Minerals
in Brain Function" was published in the
October 2001
issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
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