Author: Welma Stonehouse, Cathryn A Conlon, John Podd, Stephen R Hill, Anne M Minihane, Crystal Haskell, and David Kennedy
Article Source: The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
Date: March 20, 2013.
Link: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/97/5/1134.full.pdf+html
Summary: DHA enhance the memory and reaction time of young adults, and this enhancement is more obvious is female and APOE4 carriers
DHA significantly improves reaction time of memory but not attention and for women- there is .28 increased standard deviation from the average change, which is significant.
ReplyDeleteWhy does the attention improve and what can be done to potentially focus on this aspect of improvement?
On average DHA has a significant effect on reaction time of memory, but not as drastic on reaction time of attention. The standard deviation was higher for women than men.
ReplyDeleteWhat is standard deviation and what does it mean for the statistic about being greater for women?
Standard deviation is the quantity calculate to see the spread of the data. The greater the standard deviation the further is the data point from average. In this study, the bigger the SD the more improvement the group of patients has.
DeleteIt means that women improve more in memory and reaction time after taking DHA for 6 months.
Learned: DHA didn't improve one's attention reaction time but did help one's working memory reaction time
ReplyDeleteQuestion: On a biological level, why were women affected more by DHA than men?
In the study done for people between the age group of 18 to 45, the people who also have APOe have a faster reaction time attention.
ReplyDeleteQuestion: How would the reaction time differ from the younger group (18-45) to the older group (45-100)?
DHA has a more significant effect on the reaction time/memory on those with the less efficient ApoE allele, ApoE4.
ReplyDeleteWhat is it about the structure/function of ApoE4 that makes it less efficient than the other two alleles?
DHA improved reaction time but did not help attention with adults 18-55. Is it significant that DHA helped reaction time and memory, but did not help the attention part of it?
ReplyDeleteDHA helps increase memory reaction time for adults between the ages of 18 and 35.
ReplyDeleteMy article said that APOE4 actually increases cognitive decline and negative toxicity in the brain. I am curious why your article said that having the APOE4 gene helped increase reaction time. Does it explain why APOE4 has a positive impact on reaction time?
The people with APOE4 has more improvement after taking DHA for half a month, compare to other people.
DeleteWhat I learned: Yet another benefit of DHA is improved memory and reaction times as shown by this study. Attention however, did not seem to improve with the addition of DHA's.
ReplyDeleteQuestion: How do APOE4 carries relate to the memory aspect?
Learned: People who take DHA will increase your reaction, but it will not increase your attentiveness. Basically, DHA will improve short-term memory.
ReplyDeleteQuestion: Could other Omega-3's such as EPA, and ALA have a greater affect on attention time rather than DHA?
A couple questions:
ReplyDelete(1) What is a "significant effect" and how is that measured? What tests were they doing?
(2) When testing the effect/relationship to DHA, was it a monitoring of diet or supplements? Would this make a difference?
(1)
DeleteThe significant effect is measure by standard deviation. They list their formula in the doc: it looks like z-test in statistics. They also say,"Statistical analyses were performed with IBM SPSS statistics software."
The tests are: 1.Computerized Mental Performance Assessment System (Northumbria University) 2.the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III Intelligence test.
(2)
They monitored the supplement capsules. Since there is a placebo group, I think it doesn't matter.