Resumen de Learn better by counting your calories
Eating less can sharpen one's thinking. Kaveh Ashrafi at the University of California, San Francisco, has found it may also boost the brain. His team trained Caenorhabditis elegans roundworms to associate the scent of a chemical, butanone, with a food reward. The proportion of worms that migrated from the center of a circle to one side laced with butanone, rather than the opposite side that smelled of alcohol, showed how well they had learned this lesson. The worms tested had either eaten freely, or fasted for 1 hour, or had a calorie-restricted diet. The proportion of worms on a diet of half the normal calories that migrated was double that for those allowed to eat freely. The same was true for worms that fasted, suggesting low-calorie diets and short-term fasts have similar effects. Eating fewer calories may work by depleting a brain chemical called kynurenic acid, which in turn
