Mind Control. You Can Have More Self Control than You Think

 

Who’s in charge in deciding what your brain thinks about? Many factors are involved, but you have more control than you might think.

Everyone has some degree of self-control that affects their beliefs, desires, thoughts, goals, plans, and feelings. Humans are unique in their capacity for self-control, which is generally assumed to arise from the relatively large frontal cortex in the brain. The neocortex even has a series of linked circuits that constitute an executive control system. Lack of self-control underlies many social and mental health problems. Failing at self-regulation can lead to obesity, addiction, poverty, sexual promiscuity, and other ill-advised behaviors. On the other hand, people with superior self-control are more likely to be "healthy, wealthy, and wise."

How do we learn such control? I identify five factors:

1.    Motivation

We are motivated by the brain's positive reinforcement mechanisms and our mental ability to adjust the set point for the level of reinforcement that satisfies us. Like a heater thermostat, if the setting is low, it doesn't take much heat to meet the demand. If the setting is high, we need more heat and for longer periods. How does one adjust the personal hedonistic set point?

One way to increase self-control is to have many alternative positive reinforcers that allow one to substitute "good" reinforcers for bad ones. Another way is to structure goals consciously so that achievement requires "good" reinforcers. You can seek the company of fellow beings who wish to share those same values and guidelines. Incentives matter.

2.    Mental Fatigue

Resisting temptation can be hard work. In secular life, we get refreshment from taking a vacation. Taking a vacation from resisting temptation is hardly the righteous choice. What then, do we do to refresh the self-control required for resisting temptation?

Capacity for self-control is apparently a "limited resource" that can be depleted. Replenishment takes time in which there are fewer demands. Maybe this is one advantage of vacations or retreats. Escape from tempting situations is akin to taking a vacation.

Our own negative thoughts wear us out. Distressing thoughts make it all too easy to obsess to the point of emotional exhaustion. Think of all the times you have lost sleep over something that troubles you. When awake, such obsession diminishes our productivity.  How do we inhibit such obsessive thought? Mental discipline is required. There are ways to train the brain to be more disciplined at screening out intrusive thoughts. One method, strangely enough, involves working-memory training tasks; these train the brain to focus and screen out distracting thought.[1]  Habitual intense prayer or meditation may do the same thing.

3.    Age

Young people usually have less self-control that adults. Educators assert that self-control in preschool-aged children is more associated with school success than is IQ.[2] Brain dysfunctions that alter self-control will increase impulsivity and often lead to anti-social and even violent behavior. Brain scans show that impulsive people have an abnormally small hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.[3] We don’t know if they were born that way or got that way by a lifetime of indulging their impulses.

Executive control capability may decline in the elderly, who may become less able to take care of their needs and control their life. A study of seniors (average age of 75) revealed a tendency for elderly to withdraw from social interactions, along with an associated tendency to become depressed.[4] Stress, which may well have a cumulative effect over the years, is compounded by the current stresses of old age. The adrenal-pituitary stress axis may be more active, resulting in a high blood pressure from adrenalin release and shriveling of neural synapses from excessive cortisol release.

Biochemical markers of inflammation increase with age. The cumulative stresses of a lifetime can cause increased anxiety, confusion, further stress, and depression. Thus, a vicious cycle of mental deterioration may ensue. In such a state, executive control fails, and the person may become helpless and dependent.

4.    Religion

"Mind over matter" is a central theme in most religions. The idea is that proper spiritual belief gives you the strength to cope with the vicissitudes of life. Paradoxically, the most religious people, like monks, may not use their strength of faith to cope with life but actually escape worldly stress by living in monasteries or nunneries.

Literature surveys reveal a strong relationship between religiosity and self-control. Self-control in religious people is manifest in that they tend to suffer less from depression, avoid trouble with sex or drugs, do better in school, and even visit the dentist more regularly. It is not clear whether religious experiences promote self-discipline or whether a self-disciplined person is more likely to respond to the self-control requirements of religion. It could be both. Whatever the case, to be mentally and spiritually healthy, we must learn to discipline our thinking, just as we discipline our body to improve our golf game or other physical skills.

An interesting survey of 213 people measured both the degree of self-control and religiosity.[5] People who believed in traditional religions were more likely to have motivational drive and strategic planning for their actions. Perhaps not surprisingly, people who had more superstitious beliefs were less likely to control impulsive behavior.

Prayer seems to be an active way to promote replenishment. A demonstration of this point comes from an experiment where subjects engaged in personal prayer or an equivalent time in free mind-wandering thought. A subsequent self-control test revealed superior scores for those in the prayer group.[6]

Adolescents seem to have less self-control than mature adults. One study involved 1,785 young adults of different religions (Muslims, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox- and Bible-belt Christians) in different countries.[7] Young people with intrinsic religiosity (living one's faith)  were less likely to exhibit deviant behaviors, such as theft, substance use, cheating, etc. than those driven by extrinsic religiosity (using one's faith for personal advancement). The religious beneficial effect was greatest in those who had low natural levels of self-control.

Most religions make a positive social impact by teaching and requiring self-control. Just thinking about God can improve our will power. One experiment demonstrated this in a trivial way by priming subjects with a pre-test task of unscrambling sentences that contained religious thoughts. The subsequent task was to drink an unpleasant mixture of orange juice and vinegar, for which they were paid for the amount they drank. Compared to a neutral-primed control group, the religion-primed group drank twice as much of the sour juice. In another part of the experiment, investigators told participants that when the study was over they would receive monetary compensation. If the participants came back the next day, they would receive $5, but if they came back a week later, they would receive $6. Even with the small $1 difference, a greater percentage of the participants in the religious-primed group decided to wait and receive the larger amount of money than those in the neutral-primed group.[8]

Some evidence indicates that people are more motivated toward good behavior if they view God as punishing rather than a God of love. In a study at Brigham Young University, Mormon students were assigned a task to button press when they saw a picture of juice or to inhibit the press when they saw a picture of beer (which their religion forbids). A neural signal over the anterior cingulate cortex that is known to be an error indicator became smaller when subjects were reminded of God's love instead of God's punishment. The interpretation was that focusing on God's love and forgiveness made students less worried about making mistakes in the task.[9]

One of the more obvious and measurable examples of religion effects is how it can reduce pain. A common way that medical service providers assess pain is to ask a patient to rate the intensity of pain on a scale of 0 to 10. In one experiment, 24 patients, half practicing Catholics and the other half avowed atheists, had been screened to have equal baseline pain thresholds. They were then given electrical shocks while staring at different images, some religious and others not. Pain scores dropped when viewing religious images, and non-religious images had no effect. Brain scans showed that when pain was reduced, the activity level was increased in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, a region that other investigators had shown was instrumental in driving top-down circuitry that inhibits pain.[10] A simple explanation is that the pain-relief is like that afforded when a dentist twists your cheek as he inserts a needle to anesthetize a tooth or a veterinarian slaps a horse's hip as he simultaneous slams a needle to inject a medication. In these cases, the signals that ordinarily cause pain are mixed with other dominant signals that limit the brain's ability to feel pain.

5.    Yoga/Meditation

Yoga is a practice that most clearly illustrates the ability of the mind to control the body. The most obvious effects of yoga meditation are on breathing, which can be dramatically slowed and made more abdominal, and the cardiovascular system, in which heart rate slows and blood pressure drops.[11]  Yoga masters can alter bodily functions in even more profound ways, such as forcing extreme sweating or lying on a bed of nails. Mindfulness meditation, wherein attention is focused on breathing or a mantra, promotes the development of attentional skills and changes neural activity related to self-control.[12

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[1] Bomyea, J., and Amir, N. (2011). The effect of an executive functioning training program on working memory capacity and intrusive thoughts. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 35(6), 529-535. doi:10.1007/s10608-011-9369-8

[2] Blair, C., & Razza, R. (2007). Relating effortful control, executive function, and false belief understanding to emerging math and literacy ability in kindergarten. Child Dev., 7(8), 2nd ser., 647-663. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01019.x.

[3] Penney, S. (2012). Impulse control and criminal responsibility: Lessons from neuroscience. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 35(2), 99-103. doi:10.1016/j.ijlp.2011.12.004

[4] Boss, L., Branson, S., Cron, S., & Kang, D. (2016). Biobehavioral examination of religious coping, psychosocialfFactors, and executive function in homebound older adults. Religions, 7(5), 42. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel7050042

[5] Wain, O., & Spinella, M. (2007). Executive functions in morality, religion, and paranormal beliefs. International Journal of Neuroscience, 117(1), 135-146. doi:10.1080/00207450500534068

[6] Malte Friese, Michaela Wänke, Personal prayer buffers self-control depletion, In Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 51, 2014, Pages 56-59, ISSN 0022-1031, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2013.11.006.

[7] Klanjšek, R., Vazsonyi, A. T., & Trejos-Castillo, E. (2012). Religious orientation, low self-control, and deviance: Muslims, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox-, and “Bible belt” Christians. Journal of Adolescence, 35(3), 671-682. doi:10.1016/j.adolescence.2011.09.003

[8] Rounding, K., Lee, A., Jacobson, J., Ji, L., Religion replenishes self-control. (2012). Psychological Science, 23(6),  635-643.

[9] Good, M., Inzlicht, M., & Larson, M. J. (2014). God will forgive: Reflecting on god's love decreases neurophysiological responses to errors. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, doi:nsu096 [pii]

[10] Wiech, K., Farias, M., Kahane, G., Shackel, N., Tiede, W., & Tracey, I. (2008). An fMRI study measuring analgesia enhanced by religion as a belief system. PAIN, 139(2), 467-476. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pain.2008.07.030

[11] Olex, Stephen, Andrew Newberg, Andrew, and Figueredo, Vincent M., (2013). Meditation: Should a cardiologist care?, International Journal of Cardiology, 168(3),1805-1810,

[12] Moore, A., Gruber, T., Derose, J., & Malinowski, P. (2012). Regular, brief mindfulness meditation practice improves electrophysiological markers of attentional control. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6(18), 1-15.

Belief about Memory Ability Can Become Self-fulfilling Prophecy

If you think you don’t have a good memory, you probably don’t. It is not just a matter of self-awareness. People often think they are stuck with whatever memory capability they have, for better a worse. Not true! The fact is that anybody can improve memory ability, if they learn how (I have four books that explain how; see reviews at WRKlemm.com).

On the other hand, if you believe you have a poor memory, you may not do what is necessary to improve your memory capability. Thus, believing you have a poor memory contributes to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Evidence

1. Memory “athletes” who participate in memory tournaments train to improve their memory. Joshua Foer, author of the memory book, Moonwalking with Einstein, was a journalist with an ordinary memory. In his reporting on memory athletes, he became enamored with how they achieved amazing feats of memory. So he learned how they did it, trained, and in  2006 won the U. S. Memory Championship. 

2. Another line of evidence comes from the elderly in China. There, old age is venerated and researchers have noticed that older Chinese do NOT have diminished memory ability, as is the usual case in other countries. Picking up on this theme, Harvard University researchers studied 90 people, age 60 or older, and found they could change memory task performance by manipulating the beliefs about their memory skills.The manipulation involved creating a biasabout memory ability. Subjects viewed a list of about 50 words that either represented senile behaviors (“absent-minded,” “senile,” etc.) or represented “wise” behaviors (“sees all sides of issues,” “smart,” etc.). The lists were presented on a computer screen, and the subjects were asked to notice whether a flash occurred above or below a bulls eye that they were to focus on. Subjects were to signal the location of the flash as soon as they could with a computer key press. The rate of stimulus presentation was slow enough to allow the subliminal messages to be encoded but fast enough to keep them from being registered consciously. This was a way for the experimenter to make the conditioning subliminal and implicit. Messages were presented in five sets, each containing 20 words. Before and after the intervention, subjects were given three different kinds of memory tests that are known to assess the kinds of memory decline that occur in old age.

Test results revealed a correspondence between memory performance and the conditioned bias. Compared with their pre-test memory scores, post-test scores increased in the group that was primed with words signifying wisdom and were lower in the group that was primed with words suggesting senility.

Explanation

Belief changes attitude, and attitude changes performance. Psychologist Martin Seligman wrote a magnificent book, Learned Optimism, Beliefs about poor memory ability can cause poor memory. which points out that both optimism and pessimism are learned explanatory styles that people use to evaluate the causes of their successes and failures.

Seligman even has a test that measures one’s explanatory style, on a scale ranging  from an optimist style (where people consider negative events as temporary, specific, and external) to the pessimist style  (where people regard negative events  as permanent, pervasive, and personalized). Optimists believe they can fix what is wrong. Pessimists don't try to fix things, because they have concluded that their shortcomings are permanent, pervasive, and characteristic of themselves. The effects of these contrasting styles clearly affect one’s view of the capacity for self-improvement. The good news is one can learn a more beneficial explanatory style, in effect, changing one’s attitude.

It doesn’t take long to learn a limiting explanatory style that says you are as good as you can get. I see this all the time in students, many of whom don’t really believe they can improve their memory capability, even when I show them how. Instead of using the new approaches I teach, they fall back on their old ways of learning, which usually involves no particular strategy and the use of rote memory.

Cure

The point is this: if you are motivated to develop a better memory and believe you can, you are much more likely to do what it takes to have a better memory. The implications for real-world memory performance seem clear. Believing can change our attitude and motivate us to do the things that will make it so.

References

Klemm, W. R. 2012. Memory Power 101. SkyhorsePublishing.com

Klemm, W. R. 2011. Better Grades. Less Effort. Benecton. Smashwords.com

Levy B. R, and  Langer,  E. (1994) Aging free from negative stereotypes: Successful memory among the American deaf and in China. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 66:935–943

Dr. Bill Klemm. a.k.a. “Memory Medic,” is a Professor of Neuroscience at Texas A&M University. He has spent a career in brain research. His 50 years of experience with students and his own aging have given him additional insights into how memory can be improved. 

                   If your memory is ill, Dr. Bill is your pill

Scoring Wisdom

Most everybody believes that one becomes wiser with age and experience. People obviously vary across a wide spectrum of foolish to wise. We all have opinions about our own degree of wisdom compared to others, but is there an objective way to measure wisdom?

A group of researchers at U.C. San Diego believes that wisdom can be objectively measured. They tested their ideas on 524 adults, aged 25-104 years, selected from an on-going longitudinal investigation called the Successful Aging Evaluation (SAGE) study. The study population involved near equal numbers of males and females, with more than three-fourths claiming to be non-Latino white. A majority had some college education. The study was funded by three grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the Veterans Administration, and the Stein Institute for Research on Aging.

The researchers developed a series of questions that focused on physical, cognitive, and psychosocial aspects of successful aging across the adult lifespan. Collectively, the answers provide a numerical index of wisdom that can be used to compare and judge people on the basis of presumed wisdom. Participants rated a set of statements by agreeing or disagreeing with on a scale of one to five. The statements presumably tested the degree of wisdom, covering six specific domains: 1) prosocial attitudes and behaviors such as empathy, altruism and social cooperation, 2) social decision-making/pragmatic knowledge of life, 3) emotional regulation, 4) reflection/self-understanding, 5) tolerance of diverse values, 6) and ability to effectively deal with uncertainty and ambiguity in life.

Factor analysis revealed that the scale reliably measured wisdom as defined by the questions. Thus, their questionnaire makes effective distinctions between individuals’ differing degrees of wisdom.

Limitations of the study are that responses were self-reported, not measured empirically by others. Also, the demographic was narrow (Caucasians with some higher education). Some of the assumptions could be questioned. For example, is a sense of well-being always a reliable indicator of wisdom? A person could feel good because of lucky circumstance or because of delusion. Is it always wise to be tolerant of diverse values, especially if it leads to political correctness run amuck or acceptance of an evil that needs to be overcome? How wise is it to accept ambiguity if it means avoiding the hard work of solving important problems? 

That brings us to the definition of wisdom, which is hard to define. However, we think we know it when we see it. Certainly we should seek to be wise, but not without a lot of hard thought on what that means.

The potential value of wisdom-scoring questionnaires is that they can have a teaching function of helping to show people what wisdom is by identifying its specific domains in a tangible way that could guide the striving for wisdom. Another value could be clinical evaluation of mental deterioration with age. Finally, such questionnaires could be used in screening people for suitability for admission into prestigious universities, hiring in industries requiring emotional and cognitive maturity, or acceptance into certain social groups. However, the judgmental use of such questionnaires opens the door to manipulation by the people taking the test and discrimination by those using the test results for personal judgment.

The researchers promote their "San Diego Wisdom Scale (SD-WISE)" as a new way to judge people. Society already has multiple ways to judge people: IQ scores, SAT scores, "likes" and "followers" on social media—and now on wisdom! Such indices have some valid uses, but the possibilities for abuse are enormous. Why are we always looking for ways to judge people? When people must be judged, why not emphasize what they actually do, not what their test score is?

Get the most out of life as you age. Get my e-book, "Improve Your Memory for a Healthy Brain. Memory Is the Canary in Your Brain's Coal Mine." I present research evidence to show that doing the things that help your memory will also help your brain's general functions. You can delay and may even prevent age-induced mental decline. Authoritative, well researched and documented, this book provides in-depth explanations on topics such as brain aging, relationships of memory with other brain functions, how to reduce absent-mindedness, the diseases of aging, and diet and supplements that do and do not help memory. 

Source:

Thomas, M. L. (2017). A new scale for assessing wisdom based on common domains and a neurobiological model: The San Diego Wisdom Scale (SD-Wise). J. Psychiatric Res. Sep 8. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2017.09.005

The Best Years of Your Life

When I was young, there was no respect for youth.

Now there's no respect for the old.

I missed it both times!

                                Milton Berle (or so he claims)

When you were a teenager, were you ever told, "Enjoy this time, it's the best years of your life?" What a stupid thing to say. Youth is wasted on the young, and for most people, youth is hardly the best years of life.

Ours is a youth-obsessed culture, demanding living in the now with youthful gusto. Who has time for lessons learned and the wisdom that comes with age? Here's one example that only older people know: All this excitement about legalizing marijuana is being fomented by people who know nothing of the exhaustive social and scientific marijuana research conducted in the 1930s and the harmful biological effects in the 1970s.  Older scholars know about this, but younger ones seem woefully uninformed and uninterested in "old" research. Actually, that often applies to old research in all fields.

We are all going to get old, assuming we don't die first. Our friends, relatives, and loved ones are or will get old. As baby boomers retire, older people are coming to dominate the population. Modern medicine and the wide pursuit of healthier living styles have enabled many older people to live longer and remain vigorous and productive in their old age. Yet, in this country and many other Western countries, we shun, neglect, and sometimes abuse the old. This is the theme of a recent blog by the CEO of a medical products company, Sue Chen.

Chen contends that as people age, others lose interest in engaging with them. A recent National Research Council study indicated that older adults are stigmatized as a group. Older people are treated like old people in social groups and in the workplace. Less is expected of seniors. Seniors in turn expect less of themselves. Chen asserts that younger people shun the elderly and don't want to think about aging because they are afraid of their own impending aging. They know that older people become more socially isolated and that the loneliness is magnified when divorce or death causes the loss of a spouse. Children are unintentionally conditioned to have negative bias about older people. Young families often shut out older parents, aunts, and uncles. We seem to have abandoned the "extended family" concept that was so wholesomely dominant only a few decades ago.

Fear of further aging and being sick and lonely grows with each passing year. Fear of aging is unwarranted, at least for healthy seniors with sufficient retirement income. Actually, one's later years can be the best years of life. Helen Hayes, at age 73, said "The hardest years are between 10 and 70." Paul Meyer, upon reaching 70, claimed that "Life begins at 70." By that time we all have accumulated a "rich reserve" of life experiences and lessons learned. He tries to do all the things he has always done. He points out some of the many advantages of old age, such as people expecting less of you. What you do accomplish makes a bigger impression because it isn't expected. At 70 you have more choices. You can act your age or act young. You can do things you didn't have time for in the past, particularly "smelling the roses." You can take naps without feeling guilty. You feel less guilty about the way you raised your kids, because now they know just how hard raising kids is and are having many of the same difficulties and angst as you did. Time becomes precious, because it is running out. You therefore spend it more wisely. You don't waste time on harmful emotions or personal animosities.

Now at 81, my experience is consistent with what Hayes and Meyer concluded.  I am, even though semi-retired, more efficient and almost as productive in my profession as when I "retired." Amazingly, I have discovered more free time to work. And now, I get to do what I want to do, not what others want me to do. But the biggest advantage of aging, as I see it, is that older people have typically learned more about how to cope with disappointment and adversity and how to squeeze the sweet and good juice out of life.

In the absence of debilitating sickness, aging can be a great blessing. There are many things people can and should be doing to make the senior years the best years of their lives. These include eating well, exercising frequently and vigorously, constructing a positive emotional attitude, becoming more active in mental and social life, getting frequent medical checkups, and most of all I think, living with an honorable purpose.

To know more about aging well, check out my e-book, Improve Your Memory for a Healthy Brain. Memory Is the Canary in Your Brain's Coal Mine, available at Smashwords.com. My "Improve Learning and Memory" blog is at http://thankyoubain.blogspot.com.

Sources:

http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195138931.001.0001/acprof-9780195138931-chapter-4. Accessed Oct. 17, 2015.

Chen, Sue (2015). What you don't know about aging could kill you. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hippo-reads/what-you-dont-know-about-_9_b_8091512.html

Meyer, Paul J. (2000). Making the rest the best. Chicken Soup for the Golden Soul. Deerfield Beach, Fl.: Health Communications.  p. 480-486.

Health Benefits of Resveratrol: New Plaudits

Joe: My doctor told me to give up drinking, smoking, and fatty foods.

Sam: What will you do?

Joe: I think I’ll give up my doctor.

I try not to get too excited about memory benefits of supplements, because too often the claims are not substantiated by studies that are well controlled and peer reviewed. I now think resveratrol may be one of the few supplements that benefits brain function.

When I wrote my first blog on research on resveratrol benefits for brain function and memory, there were over 2,000 scientific papers.[1] Don't worry; I am only going to tell you about a few studies.

Resveratrol is an active ingredient in red wine. This compound has been credited for explaining why red-wine drinkers in France, who drink more wine than most people, are healthier than would be predicted by their lifestyle of little exercise and eating lots of cheese. The problem is most studies suggest you would have to drink a 100 or more glasses of red wine a day to get much resveratrol effect (and that effect would obviously be negated by a toxic dose of alcohol). An obviously more healthful choice is the highly concentrated pill forms of resveratrol that are now on the market.

Most of the protective biological actions associated with resveratrol have been associated with its scavenger properties for free radicals and the protective effects that it confers on the heart and diabetes. 

One important study comes from a diabetes research group in Brazil recently who reported a beneficial effect of resveratrol on diabetic rats.[2] Resveratrol (in a modest rat dose of 10 and 20 mg per kilogram per day for 30 days) prevented the impairment of memory induced by diabetes. Resveratrol may be protecting neuron terminals that diabetes can damage. An earlier study by another group showed resveratrol improved glucose metabolism and promoted longevity in diabetic mice.

Another benefit of resveratrol is the anti-oxidant property. The brain produces more free-radical damage than other organs, because it burns so much oxygen. Compared with other organs, the brain has especially low levels of antioxidant defense enzymes. 

One recent study has revealed resveratrol had protective effects against brain damage caused by a chemical that kills acetylcholine neurons. Injection of this toxin into the brain of rats impaired their memory performance in two kinds of maze tasks. The impairment was significantly reduced by repeated injection of resveratrol (10 and 20 mg/kg) per day for 25 days, beginning four days before the toxin injection.[3]

Another recent study examined effects on working memory in mice fed a resveratrol-supplemented diet for four weeks before being injected with a cytokine to induce inflammation and accelerate aging. Resveratrol significantly reduced memory impairment in the aged group, but not in the young adults[4]. The lack of benefit in young adults was a little misleading, in that there was a "ceiling effect" in that the young adults were not impaired by the cytokine injection.

 The practical issue for us is whether resveratrol will help cognitive function in humans, especially healthy humans. It seems likely because other substances that have strong anti-oxidant properties seem to improve memory capability. Because animal studies have shown promise for resveratrol in preventing or treatment several different conditions associated with aging, several human clinical trials have been initiated.[5]

 An impressive new study of older humans, male and female, has just been reported.[6] Twenty-three healthy, but overweight people completed 6 months of daily resveratrol intake (200 mg ― the commercial brand I take has 300 mg/capsule). A paired control group got placebo pills. A double-blind design assured that neither the subjects nor the experimenters knew which individuals were in each group during data processing. Memory tests of word recall revealed significant improvement in the resveratrol group. Resveratrol also increased brain-scan measures of functional connectivity, which identified linked neural activity between the hippocampus and several areas of cerebral cortex.

Because others had shown that resveratrol increased insulin sensitivity in humans, these authors examine several markers important to diabetes. Resveratrol decreased the standing levels of sugar-bound hemoglobin, a standard marker for glucose control.  

What foods besides red grapes have resveratrol? The most likely other sources you would eat or drink are blueberries, cranberries, and peanuts. It is not likely that you could drink or eat enough of such substances to get enough resveratrol to do much good. Because of the scientifically documented benefits of resveratrol, highly concentrated supplements are now on the market (I have been taking it for a couple of years). I haven't given up my two glasses of red wine each day, but I have started taking one of the supplements. I haven't seen any reports that high doses of resveratrol are toxic.

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[1] http://thankyoubrain.blogspot.com/2010/04/resveratrol-red-wine-magic-chemical.html April 4, 2010.

[2] Schmatz R, et al. (2009). Resveratrol prevents memory deficits and the increase in acetylcholinesterase activity in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats. Eur J Pharmacol. 2009 May 21;610(1-3):42-8. Epub 2009 Mar 19.

[3] Kumar, A. et al. 2007. Neuroprotective effects of resveratrol against intracerebroventricular colchicine-induced cognitive impairment and oxidative stress in rats. Pharmacology.79 (1): 17-26. DOI: 10.1159/000097511

[4] Abraham, J., and Johnson, R. W. 2009. Consuming a diet supplemented with resveratrol reduced infection-related neuroinflammation and deficits in working memory in aged mice. Rejuvenation research. 12 (6): 445-453.  DOI: 10.1089/rej.2009.0888

[5] Smoliga, J. M. et al. (2011). Resveratrol and health – a comprehensive review of human clinical trials.  Mol. Nutrition Food Res. 55: 1129-1141

[6] Witte, A. V., et al. (2014) Effects of resveratrol on memory performance, hippocampal functional connectivity, and glucose metabolism in healthy older adults. J. Neuroscience. 34 23): 7862-7870.

"Memory Medic's latest book is for seniors (Improve Your Memory for a Healthy Brain. Memory Is the Canary in Your Brain's Coal Mine," available in inexpensive e-book format at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/496252.  See also his recent book, "Mental Biology. The New Science of How the Brain and Mind Relate" (Prometheus).