CAP TODAY Pathology/Laboratory Medicine/Laboratory Management
Clinical pathology abstracts editor: Deborah Sesok-Pizzini, MD, MBA, associate professor, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and medical director, Blood Bank and Transfusion Medicine, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Benefits of green tea extract to brain connectivity during working memory processing
Green tea extract or its main ingredient has been shown to have a beneficial impact on cognitive functioning and prevention of cognitive decline. The benefit to cognition could be related to altered brain activity in regions engaged during higher order cognitive functioning. Some recent studies demonstrated increased brain activation in the fronto-parietal regions during working memory processing. These findings have generated interest in the connectivity from the parietal to the frontal cortex and the impact of green tea in the functional coupling. The authors conducted a study to explore whether green tea extract changed brain connectivity between the frontal and parietal cortex during working memory processing and if the connectivity parameters were related to task performance. They used a double-blind, counter-balanced, within-subject design to examine 12 healthy volunteers who received a milk whey-based soft drink containing 27.5 g of green tea extract or a milk whey-based soft drink without green tea as a control substance while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. The authors then used dynamic causal modeling to evaluate working memory effect on connectivity between frontal and parietal brain regions. The results showed that green tea extract increased the working memory-induced connectivity from the right superior parietal lobule to the middle frontal gyrus. Of note, the magnitude of green tea-induced increase in parieto-frontal connectivity correlated positively with improvement in task performance. The authors claim that this is the first study to provide evidence of the benefits of green tea on cognitive functioning and, more specifically, on working memory processing. The authors suggest that these findings may have implications regarding the efficacy of green tea for treating cognitive disorders such as dementia.
Schmidt A, Hammann F, Wölnerhanssen B, et al. Green tea extract enhances parieto-frontal connectivity during working memory processing [published online ahead of print March 19, 2014]. Psychopharmacology. doi:10.1007/s00213-014-3526-1.
Correspondence: Stefan Borgwardt at stefan.borgwardt@usb.ch