How Magnesium Supplements boosts brainpower

New research finds that an increase in brain magnesium improves learning and memory in young and old rats. The study, published in January 28^th issue of the journal neuron, suggests that increasing magnesium intake may be a valid strategy to enhance cognitive abilities and supports speculation that inadequate levels of magnesium impair cognitive function, leading to faster deterioration of memory in aging animals.

Diet can have a significant impact on cognitive capacity. Identification of dietary factors which have a positive influence on synapses, the sites of communication between neurons, might help to enhance learning and memory and prevent their decline with age and diseases. Professor Guosong Liu, Director of the Center for Learning and Memory at Tisinghua university in Beijing, China, led a study examining whether increased levels of one such dietary supplement, magnesium, boosts brain power.

“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.’’ Explains Liu. “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 difficult to boost brain magnesium levels with traditional oral supplements, Dr Liu and colleagues developed a new magnesium compound, magnesium-L-threorate (Mgt) that could significantly increase magnesium in the brain via dietary supplementation. They used Mgt to increase magnesium in rats of different ages and then looked for behavioural and cellular changes associated with memory.

‘’We found that increased brain magnesium enhanced many different forms of learning and memory in both young and aged rats” says Liu.

A close examination of cellular changes associated with memory revealed an increase in the number of functional synapses, activation of key signaling molecules and an enhancement of short and long-term synaptic processes that are crucial for learning and memory.