Brain Food?

Some day, the biochemists may be able to brew a magic concoction that will improve man's intelligence. At Columbia University's College of Physicians & Surgeons, three researchers--Drs. Frederick T. Zimmerman, Bessie B. Burgemeister and Tracy J. Putnam--have reported some interesting experiments with children who were given regular feedings of glutamic acid.

Glutamic acid, one of the amino acids that form proteins, is found in wheat, soybeans and (less plentifully) in certain other foods such as milk and meat. Its unusual property: glutamic is the only amino acid that is metabolized (i.e., burned up) by brain tissue, and it seems to have a beneficial effect on nerve activity in the brain. The Columbia researchers first tried feeding concentrated doses of glutamic acid to white rats. The rats' show of intelligence improved noticeably; they solved the standard maze problem in half their former time.

For the big experiment, the researchers chose 69 children, aged 5 to 17, including a mentally retarded group (average I.Q.: 65), and some epileptics of normal or superior intelligence (glutamic acid had previously been used for treating epilepsy). The children got heavy daily doses (average: 12 grams), usually mixed with food, because glutamic acid by itself is sour, oily and unpalatable. In too big doses, the acid made the children restless and sleepless; in doses they could tolerate, it produced a remarkable improvement in alertness, drive, ability to solve problems. At the end of a year the children's I.Q.s had risen an average of eleven points. Their mental growth (a two-year advance in mental age) was twice as fast as that of normal children.

Dr. Zimmerman and associates cautioned that there are limits to what glutamic acid can do: e.g., patients improve rapidly during the first six months but approach an I.Q. ceiling by the end of a year; if they quit the glutamic acid diet, they begin to backslide mentally. A still unanswered question: Would the treatment improve the intelligence of normal children or grownups?

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