Paper Spotlight: An Evaluation of Brain Connectivity Among Habitual Tea Drinkers

Posted by

Aging (Aging-US)

Aging (Aging-US) published this trending research paper in Volume 11, Issue 11, entitled, "Habitual tea drinking modulates brain efficiency: evidence from brain connectivity evaluation" by researchers from the Laboratory for Brain-Bionic Intelligence and Computational Neuroscience, Wuyi University, Jiangmen, China; Centre for Life Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore; School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom; Brain Mapping Unit, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Herchel Smith for Brain and Mind Sciences, Cambridge, United Kingdom; Department of Psychological Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore. DOI - https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102023 Correspondence to - Junhua Li - junhua.li@essex.ac.uk and Lei Feng - pcmfl@nus.edu.sg Abstract: The majority of tea studies have relied on neuropsychological measures, and much fewer on neuroimaging measures, especially for interregional connections. To date, there has been no exploration of the effect of tea on system-level brain networks. We recruited healthy older participants to two groups according to their history of tea drinking frequency and investigated both functional and structural networks to reveal the role of tea drinking on brain organization. The results showed that tea drinking gave rise to the more efficient structural organization, but had no significant beneficial effect on the global functional organization. The suppression of hemispheric asymmetry in the structural connectivity network was observed as a result of tea drinking. We did not observe any significant effects of tea drinking on the hemispheric asymmetry of the functional connectivity network. In addition, functional connectivity strength within the default mode network (DMN) was greater for the tea-drinking group, and coexistence of increasing and decreasing connective strengths was observed in the structural connectivity of the DMN. Our study offers the first evidence of the positive contribution of tea drinking to brain structure and suggests a protective effect on age-related decline in brain organisation. Sign up for free Altmetric alerts about this article - https://oncotarget.altmetric.com/details/email_updates?id=10.18632%2Foncotarget.102023 Press release - https://www.aging-us.com/news_room/habitual-tea-drinking-modulates-brain-efficiency-evidence-from-brain-connectivity-evaluation Keywords - tea drinking, brain efficiency, fMRI, DTI, default mode network, hemispheric asymmetry, aging About Aging-US Launched in 2009, Aging-US publishes papers of general interest and biological significance in all fields of aging research and age-related diseases, including cancer—and now, with a special focus on COVID-19 vulnerability as an age-dependent syndrome. Topics in Aging-US go beyond traditional gerontology, including, but not limited to, cellular and molecular biology, human age-related diseases, pathology in model organisms, signal transduction pathways (e.g., p53, sirtuins, and PI-3K/AKT/mTOR, among others), and approaches to modulating these signaling pathways. Please visit our website at http://www.Aging-US.com​​ and connect with us: SoundCloud - https://soundcloud.com/Aging-Us Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AgingUS/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/AgingJrnl Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/agingjrnl/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/agingus​ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/aging/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/AgingUS/ Aging-US is published by Impact Journals, LLC: http://www.ImpactJournals.com​​ Media Contact 18009220957 MEDIA@IMPACTJOURNALS.COM