A research has discovered that an enhancement in brain magnesium perks up learning as well as memory in young and old rats.

Released in the journal Neuron, the research suggested that increasing magnesium consumption may be a valid approach to augment cognitive abilities and backs speculation that insufficient levels of magnesium harm cognitive function.

Headed by Prof. Guosong Liu, Director of the Center for Learning and Memory at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, the research probed whether increased levels of one such dietary supplement, magnesium, improves mental capacity.

Prof. Lin explained, "Magnesium is essential for the proper functioning of many tissues in the body, including the brain and, in an earlier study, we demonstrated that magnesium promoted synaptic plasticity in cultured brain cells."

"Therefore it was tempting to take our studies a step further and investigate whether an increase in brain magnesium levels enhanced cognitive function in animals."

Because it is not easy to enhance brain magnesium intensities with customary oral supplements, Dr. Liu and fellow workers formulated a new magnesium compound, magnesium-L-threonate (MgT), which could significantly augment brain magnesium through dietary supplementation.

They uti; ized magnesium-L-threonate in order to augment magnesium in rats of different ages and then analysed behavioural and cellular changes linked with memory.

"We found that increased brain magnesium enhanced many different forms of learning and memory in both young and aged rats," said Dr. Liu.

A close assessment of cellular changes linked with memory disclosed an increase in the number of functional synapses, creation of key signaling molecules and an improvement of short- and long-term synaptic routes, which are important for learning and memory.

The authors mentioned that the control rats in this research ate a normal diet that is widely accepted to contain an adequate amount of magnesium, and that the detected effects were owing to increase of magnesium to levels greater that provided by a normal diet.

"Our findings suggest that elevating brain magnesium content via increasing magnesium intake might be a useful new strategy to enhance cognitive abilities," explains Dr. Liu. "Moreover, half the population of industrialized countries has a magnesium deficit, which increases with aging. This may very well contribute to age-dependent memory decline; increasing magnesium intake might prevent or reduce such decline." (With Input from Agencies)