Zinc can act as key factor for boosting memory, but the excessive amount of the mineral in the brain could stimulate epileptic seizures, suggests a latest research. Zinc is crucial to communicate between neurons in the hippocampus, which is learning and memory centre of the brain.
In a lab study over mice researchers from Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina, US used a chemical that combines to zinc to eliminate it from circulation in the brain of mutant mice. They found that in absence of the mineral, the communication between neuron was blighted.
They revealed that zinc is vital for controlling the efficiency between two crucial inhabitants of nerve cells in the hippocampus. This lectures to a long-standing controversy in the field, explained lead author Dr James McNamara. People taking supplements of zinc should take exercise caution.
Cautiously controlling regulation of zinc of communication between these nerve cells is crucial to formation of memories as well as possibly to occurrence of epileptic seizures, added Dr McNamara. The study findings were published online in the journal Neuron. Fifty years back, researchers come to know that high levels of zinc were holding specialized compartments in nerve cells called vesicles.
However, substantiation that zinc essentially played a key role in cell gesturing was missing. The brain cells’ over-communication emphasized in the study was known to occur in epilepsy, indicating a connection between zinc and the epileptic seizures.
source : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health