A recent study found that people with diets high in fat and sugar had worse spatial memory than those who ate these foods less often. This may not be much of a surprise. We’ve long known that unhealthy eating can contribute to the onset of cognitive decline. What may come as a surprise is that the people in this study were between the ages of 18 and 38.
Do we need to start protecting our brains from cognitive decline while we’re still young? “Definitely,” says lead author of the study, Dominic Tran, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Sydney who focuses on learning, memory, and cognition.
Fat, Sugar, and Impaired Brain Function
For the study, college students were asked to navigate a virtual maze to locate a treasure chest. In order to find the treasure chest, the subjects had to estimate distance and direction and remember the location of landmarks. They did this six times; in a seventh and final trial, researchers removed the treasure chest from the maze, and the students had to find its location by memory.
