Your pasta dinner could ketchup to your brain health.
Diets rich in fruits and vegetables have been shown to boost memory, and one of the most popular, yet controversially, grouped fruits could change how our brains function.
Researchers in Spain tested how tomatoes impact the cognitive function of healthy middle-aged adults, and it may be all thanks to one antioxidant.
A natural plant extract that gives tomatoes their vibrant red hue, lycopene is a powerful antioxidant that protects against reactive chemicals that may contribute to cancer development.
It could also have a positive influence on cognitive function, according to a pioneering clinical trial.
“To our knowledge, this is the first clinical trial to link changes in the antioxidant lycopene with alterations in functional brain connectivity,” the study authors wrote.
The study, published in the journal Antioxidants, found that consuming 35 grams of tomato paste daily for three months may enhance selective attention and boost associative memory, or the ability to learn and remember a relationship between two unrelated items (a name with a face.)
The researchers enlisted 42 adults for the trial, divided into two groups: one that included tomato paste in their diet and another that ate a diet which restricted lycopene-rich foods, such as tomato, watermelon, papaya, grapefruit or guava.
Participants completed cognitive tests, and a select 14 also had brain scans that showed potential changes in connectivity across large-scale brain networks.
Not only did lycopene increase in the tomato group, but so did brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that helps neurons grow, build connections, improve neuroplasticity (or the ability to recover from injury) and memory.
While the brain scans were smaller with less certain results, the high-lycopene diet did show lower synchronization in brain regions responsible for cognitive function and attention.
Conversely, the low-lycopene diet group showed reduced resting-state connectivity in areas of the brain associated with attention.
“Together, these neural changes suggest that tomato intake promotes functional reorganization of large-scale brain networks, enhancing neural efficiency and adaptability through the pruning of redundant cross-network interactions,” the authors wrote.
The research team also found parallel connections between lycopene consumption, BDNF and network connectivity, which may show signs of “functional brain reorganization following tomato consumption.”
These findings are also similar to those of an earlier study, in which a carotenoid-rich tomato-powder food improved processing speed, attention and working memory in older adults over eight weeks.
The researchers did note that it’s difficult to determine whether the cognitive effects were specifically from lycopene, due to the rich vitamin and antioxidant content of tomatoes.
Lycopene levels have been linked to lower rates of prostate and lung cancer, as well as heart disease and liver disease, though.
However, the initial study doesn’t prove cause-and-effect that tomatoes directly improve brain function.
Larger and longer studies are needed to determine if tomato paste has clinically meaningful cognitive changes that are sustained over time.
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