A published in Nature Neuroscience聽authored by Dr. Scott A. Small, a neurologist at Columbia University Medical Center, found that middle-aged participants consuming a drink high in cocoa flavanols鈥攁 type of antioxidant found in chocolate鈥攑erformed better on a memory test than those who consumed less of the drink.
In addition to a 25% improvement on a memory test after drinking the mix for three months, participants between the ages 50 and 69 also showed signs of increased function in the brain鈥檚 hippocampus, supporting the theory that cocoa flavanols improve the brain鈥檚 blood flow or perhaps stimulate growth of dendrites, the message-receiving branches of neurons.
鈥淎n exciting result,鈥 Craig Stark, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Irvine, . 鈥淚t鈥檚 an initial study, and I sort of view this as the opening salvo.鈥
But there are several catches. Although Dr. Small told the Times he was confident that the work was serious and unbiased, funded part of the research. The sample size included only 37 participants, and researchers found no difference in activity when examining the entorhinal cortex, an area of the hippocampus affected by Alzheimer鈥檚 disease.
Most glaringly, the 138-milligram-per-day dose of epicatechin (a particularly powerful flavanol administered in the study) is hard to come by. It is equivalent to what you might find in seven average-size chocolate bars or 100 grams of baking chocolate.