Health Claims

Dark roast coffee seems to stop harmful clumps in the brain better than light roast coffee, and scientists think it’s because the darker roasting makes more of a special compound called phenylindane.

Mechanistic

When coffee beans are roasted, they make a chemical called phenylindane that might stop harmful clumps in the brain—linked to Alzheimer’s—from forming, at least in test tubes.

Mechanistic

Even after removing certain compounds from cinnamon, another part called cinnamaldehyde still helps stop a harmful protein clumping in test tubes.

Mechanistic

A specific compound found in Ceylon cinnamon stops a harmful protein clump from forming in test tubes, which might be important for brain health.

Mechanistic

Adding cinnamon extract to a test tube with brain proteins and building blocks for cell structures doesn’t stop those proteins from doing their job of putting together the cell’s internal scaffolding.

Mechanistic

A type of cinnamon called Ceylon cinnamon might break apart abnormal protein clumps in the brain that are linked to Alzheimer’s disease, and change what these clumps look like under a microscope.

Mechanistic

A tea made from Ceylon cinnamon might stop harmful clumps of a brain protein from forming in a test tube — these clumps are linked to Alzheimer’s disease.

Mechanistic

Most of the most popular studies on this high-tech ultrasound treatment are done on animals or dead bodies, which means scientists are still mostly testing it in labs before trying it on living people.

Descriptive

The most important human study on this brain ultrasound tech showed it worked better than a fake treatment for shaking hands, and it was published in one of the world’s top medical journals.

Descriptive

Scientists have written the most papers about using MRgFUS to open the brain’s protective barrier and to treat movement problems like tremors — and when they study it in people, they’re mostly looking at essential tremor.

Descriptive

A medical journal called the Journal of Neurosurgery published more of the most popular MRgFUS research papers than any other journal, while two other journals, Radiology and the New England Journal of Medicine, had papers that got read and cited way more times overall.

Descriptive

The U.S. and Canada together produced more than half of the most talked-about scientific papers on a special type of ultrasound therapy used in medicine.

Quantitative

Two universities — Toronto and Virginia — have written the most popular science papers on a type of medical technology called MRgFUS, with Toronto writing 28 and Virginia writing 15 of the top 100 most-read papers.

Descriptive

A famous 2001 study on rabbits used sound waves and MRI to temporarily open the brain’s protective barrier, letting drugs in without surgery — and this became the go-to method for brain drug delivery research.

Descriptive

In premature babies who develop normally, brain chemicals keep improving as they get closer to their due date—but in those who have delays, this improvement doesn’t seem to happen, though the numbers are too small to be sure.

Correlational

For babies born very early and very small, doctors use two different brain scans to check for injury—but these scans don’t seem to agree with each other when it comes to spotting brain damage.

Correlational

In very small premature babies, the brain chemical ratio measured in certain areas doesn’t tell us whether they’ll develop normally or have problems later, even though this ratio naturally goes up as the baby gets older.

Descriptive

Doctors looked at brain chemical levels in tiny premature babies and found no link between those levels and how well the babies developed mentally or physically by the time they were 18 to 24 months old.

Correlational

When tiny premature babies grow a little older in the womb and after birth, their brains show signs of getting more developed—like neurons getting better connected and insulated—as seen by a special brain scan measure.

Correlational

Some chemicals in coffee, like caffeic acid and quercetin, might make a harmful protein clump together in the brain at high doses, which could make Parkinson’s disease worse — but other coffee chemicals don’t do this.

Mechanistic

A compound in coffee called quercetin might stop some harmful protein clumps linked to Alzheimer’s from forming, but it doesn’t stop another type linked to tau, and at high doses, it might even make a different protein clump more — so its effects are mixed and not simple.

Mechanistic

Even when there’s a lot more caffeine than the sticky proteins in the brain, it doesn’t stop those proteins from clumping together — so caffeine probably isn’t the main reason coffee might help prevent brain clumps.

Mechanistic

Dark roast coffee seems to stop harmful clumps in the brain better than light roast coffee, and scientists think it’s because the darker roasting creates special compounds called phenylindanes.

Mechanistic

When coffee beans are roasted, they make some natural compounds that, in lab tests, stop harmful clumps of brain proteins from forming—clumps that are linked to Alzheimer’s disease. One of these compounds, called phenylindane (6), was super effective at stopping these clumps.

Mechanistic