Special Foods Impacting on Brain Health (Aging) and Cognition

In previous sections the healthy or deleterious properties of some micronutrients and non-nutrient or
metabolites have been describe with the purpose of demonstrating their impact on human health and
diseases. In this chapter the aim is to present and describe the healthy properties of some common
foods and their macrocomponents mainly with respect to their impact on aging and cognition. There
are numerous motor (Joseph et al., 1983; Kluger et al., 1997) and cognitive (Bartus, 1990)
behavioural deficits that occur during aging even in the absence of neuro-degenerative diseases such
as: Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s diseases, Schizophrenia, among others. Age-related deficit in motor
performances are thought to be the result of alterations in striatal dopamine (DA) system (Joseph,
1992) or in the cerebellum (Bickford et al., 1992; 1993) with both structures showing significant
changes with age. With age there are increases in inflammatory mediators such as cytokines
(Rozovsky et al., 1998; Volpato et al., 2001) as well as increased mobilization and infiltration of
peripheral inflammatory cells, which have been shown to produce deficits in behaviour similar to those
observed during aging (Hauss-Wegrzyniak et al., 2000). Furthermore, age-related changes in brain
vulnerability to oxidative stress and inflammation may be the result of membrane changes and
differential receptor sensitivity.