University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska, United States
Disclosure(s):
Jisheng Wu, Bachelor's: Beef Checkoff: Grant/Research Support (Ongoing) National Pork Board: Grant/Research Support (Ongoing)
Objectives: Cognitive performance is influenced by lifestyle choices, including dietary intake, which plays a key role in brain health and functioning. Prior research indicates that (1) nuts and seeds are a type of nutrient-dense food that contains various neuroprotective components including MUFAs and PUFAs, and (2) increased consumption of foods rich in these nutrients may be associated with better executive function and fluid intelligence. However, much of this evidence stemmed from investigation of nuts and seeds in isolation, without considering their interactions with other dietary components.
Methods: To investigate the impact of nuts and seeds to individual differences in cognitive health, we conducted a study of 257 healthy adults and examined the effects of nuts and seeds consumption on well-validated measures of decision-making competence and fluid intelligence. We used targeted maximum likelihood estimation with an ensemble machine learning algorithm, a state-of-the-art statistical method that enables us to account for interactions between nuts and seeds and other food groups, to estimate associations between the consumption of nuts and seeds and measures of cognitive health. Notably, this novel method allows us to precisely quantify the unique contribution of nuts and seeds intake to cognitive health.
Results: After adjusting for age, sex, highest education level, and total caloric intake, we found that individuals who consumed more nuts and seeds demonstrated higher levels of decision-making competence (0.23; 95% CI: 0.12, 0.34) and fluid intelligence (1.52; 95% CI:0.49, 2.56).
Conclusions: Our results support previous findings showing that nutrients such as MUFAs and PUFAs are associated with better executive function and fluid intelligence. While this research highlights the promise of nuts and seeds, future research should explore their role in promoting cognitive health in intervention trials.
Funding Sources: The research is based upon work supported by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, via Contract 2014-13121700004 to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Department of Defense, Defense Advanced Research Projects Activity, via Contract 2019-HR00111990067 to the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
