Posted: October 27th, 2016

Berries and the Brain

Chapter 011: Blog

Berries and the Brain

Read the transcript and answer the questions:

>> One scientist who is at the forefront of berry research is Professor Jim Joseph.

>> The chemicals that give the blueberries, strawberries, etc. their vivid color are called anthocyanins, and they’re also pretty good antioxidants.

>> What scientists have already discovered is that anthocyanins, the colorful antioxidants in berries, can help protect against diabetes, heart disease, cancer and a range of other age-related diseases.

>> We’ve now studied them for almost 10 years, and we’ve found that the beneficial properties are much more than we would have expected from them.

>> Perhaps most surprising of all is that your mind could also benefit from these antioxidants. Some recent research into the effects of anthocyanins on memory has had promising results.

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So we took two groups of over-60s: one British and one American.

>> The older I get, why the memory goes with it. I mean, it goes down. I get up and walk in a room and wonder why I went in there.

>> And we asked them to include berries in their diet for three months to see what difference it might make to their declining brain power. Our American volunteers are a cowboy reenactment shooting club called the Dixie Desperados, and they will eat one cup of blueberries every day. Meanwhile in the UK, the members of the East Preston Bowls Club will each eat a bowlful of strawberries each day for the next few months to see what that does for their memories.

>> Names have always been a thing with me. That’s why we got nametags.

>> I mean I think as I’ve got older, my memory generally has got worse.

>> And as our volunteers eat the berries, we’ll keep track of any changes in their mental faculties with a series of computer-based tests every week. These tests are measuring our volunteers’ reaction times, memory and learning skills.

>> Good morning. Ready to cha-cha-cha?

>> And of top of that we asked both groups to learn a new dance, as this is one of the best ways to test short-term memory. So we assessed how quickly our two groups mastered new dance steps, before and after three months of eating their berries. As we get older, we tend to become more forgetful, we’re not as mentally alert, and we have slower reaction times. Researchers believe this mental decline over time is due to the gradual spread of damage to our brain cells or neurons. And much of this damage can be caused by free radicals.

[ Music ]

>> What happens as you age is you get less able to repair the damage they cause. Now, what this translates into then later on is the inability for one neuron to talk to another.

>> We’re hoping that the antioxidants in berries can help slow down the rate of free radical damage. Then after three months, we analyzed the data from all our volunteers, looking for any changes in their memory and reaction times. A few of our volunteers have begun to show an improvement.

>> I thought I had improved a little bit, but didn’t realize we had improved that much. So yeah, quite impressed.

>> And across the pond, some of our volunteers have also noticed real differences in their memory.

>> We’d been going through a period of forgetfulness.

>> Yes.

>> Where are our car keys?

>> That’s right.

>> We’d lose our car keys. I haven’t lost my car keys in over a month, I know that.

>> Right.

>> But it wasn’t good news for all of our berry eaters. Several of them haven’t shown any improvement.

>> If your memory is good in the first place, it can’t much improve anyway, so.

>> For those that did get better, the improvement so far is only small and hasn’t yet reached the level of scientific significance. But some of our volunteers have decided to change their diet for the better.

>> I could happily eat a thousand strawberries every day for rest of my life, I think.

>> Do you?

>> I love them, actually.