Abstract
Cognitive disorders can be associated with brain trauma, neurodegenerative disease or as a part of physiological aging. Aging in humans is generally associated with deterioration of cognitive performance and, in particular, learning and memory. Different therapeutic approaches are available to treat cognitive impairment during physiological aging and neurodegenerative or psychiatric disorders. Traditional herbal medicine and numerous plants, either directly as supplements or indirectly in the form of food, improve brain functions including memory and attention. More than a hundred herbal medicinal plants have been traditionally used for learning and memory improvement, but only a few have been tested in randomized clinical trials. Here, we will enumerate those medicinal plants that show positive effects on various cognitive functions in learning and memory clinical trials. Moreover, besides natural products that show promising effects in clinical trials, we briefly discuss medicinal plants that have promising experimental data or initial clinical data and might have potential to reach a clinical trial in the near future.
Highlights
Learning is the experience-dependent acquisition of knowledge and skills, whereas memory is the retention and retrieval of facts or events composed of experiences
The results showed that patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease (AD) who received long-term galantamine treatment exhibited an attenuated decline in cognitive function, as assessed by the MMSE, compared with decline predicted in the absence of treatment
In a 24 week randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, multicenter study conducted in elderly patients with dementia (AD or vascular dementia (VaD)) or age-associated memory impairment (AAMI), 214 participants were randomly allocated to receive either EGb 761 (240 mg/day or 160 mg/day) or placebo
Summary
Learning is the experience-dependent acquisition of knowledge and skills, whereas memory is the retention and retrieval of facts or events composed of experiences. Physiological senescence is normally associated with a decline in cognition and motor skills, thereby decreasing the quality of life in elderly people. Are some of the important factors that might contribute to learning and memory impairment in the elderly. Medicine systems such as Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) are based on the use of herbal compounds to treat aging and memory loss. We will discuss available clinical data of herbal compounds for disorders involving learning and memory impairment. We have chosen those natural products for which substantial clinical data are available for improving cognition. Besides natural products in clinical trials, we have listed those plants whose experimental data or initial clinical data seem promising and have potential to reach a clinical trial in the near future
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