A Study Habit to Chew On (Source: Canadian Living -Health and Wellness)

"Chewing gum just might be making your child smarter"

Teachers, next time think twice about forcing Johnny to chuck his gum before the big exam: chewing just might be making him smarter.

Andrew Scholey, a psychologist and director of the Human Cognitive Neuroscience Unit at North Umbria University in Newcastle, England, enlisted 75 volunteers to chomp their way through 12 computerized attention-and-memory tests. They were divided into three groups: those that chewed gum during the 25-minute test, those that pretended to chew and those that didn't chew. The gum chewers performed better on both short-and long-term memory tests - 35 percent better than non-chewers when recalling word lists.

These improved results may be indirectly linked to increase oxygen levels. Chewing raises the heart rate by five to six beats per minute, which could possibly increase oxygen levels in the brain. The brain accounts for only three percent of the body weight but consumes approximately 20 percent of the body's oxygen. Previous research by Scholey showed that a whiff of oxygen before testing improved both short and long term memory and attention.

Chewing may also release insulin, possibly a conditioned response in anticipation of eating. Although there's no definitive research on insulin and memory, the hippocampus, a section of the brain critical to memory is densely packed with insulin receptors.

Claude Messier, a professor of behavioral neuroscience in the department of psychology at the University of Ottawa and a specialist in the biology of memory, doubts the experiments' outcomes are due to either oxygen or insulin. "A five-beat-per-minute increase in heart rate is quite insignificant for brain oxygenation," note Messier, "and, even though tiny amounts of insulin penetrates the brain very slowly, so it's unlikely to reach the brain in time."

He believes there could be another explanation: gum chewing stimulates the vagus nerve, which carries information from the stomach to the brain. "It is active during digestion and could be activated by the flow of saliva into the stomach when chewing sugar-free gum," says Messier. Electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve has bee shown to improve memory and "could explain the effect of gum chewing on memory." ~*~Lanny Boutin~*~