Coffee can enhance memory and improve intelligence

The research team led by Pryce, a professor at University College London, said in a paper in the journal Nature that teenagers' IQs may increase or decline significantly, rather than being stable from childhood as previously widely believed.

"We have to be careful not to deny a person because of poor performance in childhood," Price said. "in fact, their IQ may improve significantly in a few years."

At the same time, she warned that smart children may not always be smart.

Combined with some recent findings related to changes in brain ability, Price speculates that their findings apply not only to children. IQ test results may also change significantly in adulthood. Plasticity (in children) can last a lifetime. "

Tonics to strengthen the brain are unreliable

A study from Duke University School of Medicine in the United States shows that hoping to replenish your brain by eating some nutrients may make you feel frustrated.

After summing up the results over the years, the researchers concluded that many so-called brain tonics containing vitamins B6, B12 or folic acid claim to keep the brain young forever, but the effect is similar to eating daily foods such as fish, fruits and vegetables.

The Duke University School of Medicine study suggests that there is insufficient evidence that foods rich in antioxidants can improve intelligence.

Learning a foreign language to prevent dementia

Alan Biarestock, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of York in Canada, has found that regular speaking in two or more languages can stimulate activity in the prefrontal cortex, enhance problem-solving skills, improve IQ, and delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease. reduce the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.

They studied 184 Alzheimer's patients treated at a clinic in Toronto, including 91 monolinguals and 93 bilinguals, and found that the average age at which symptoms occurred in monolinguals was 71.4 years and that in bilinguals was 75.5 years.

In another study, they studied 40 75-year-old Alzheimer's patients with the same level of cognition. Half of the patients were monolinguals and half were bilinguals. Biarestock found that the temporal cortex was more severely damaged in bilinguals, meaning that bilinguals had no worse cognition than monolinguals when this part of the brain was more severely damaged than monolinguals.

Coffee and red wine is effective.

However, people always hope to find some kind of magic food that can make people smarter, and the research in this field has never stopped.

Serena Dudek, a researcher at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, has found that caffeine increases activity in the CA2 region of the hippocampus, meaning signals can be better transmitted in the brain, thereby improving learning ability.

Some studies have shown that pomegranate juice and turmeric, a spice commonly used in cooking in India and Thailand, may contain ingredients that improve memory and cognition. In addition, the researchers believe that dark chocolate and red wine also have some brain-boosting effects.