Dietary supplementation of creatine monohydrate reduces the human fMRI BOLD signal
Section snippets
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Emma McHarg for extensive help with statistical analyses and many helpful comments and thank Pavlos Alifragis, Jonas Larsson, Krish Singh and Robin Williams for many helpful discussions. Matthew Wall is currently at the Institute of Neurology, UCL, and GlaxoSmithkline Clinical Imaging Centre, UK.
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Creatine supplementation in the aging brain
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2017, Journal of Affective DisordersCitation Excerpt :Similarly, 45 vegetarian young adults who received 5 g/day of creatine for 6 weeks in a double-blind crossover placebo-controlled trial (Rae et al., 2003a) showed improved results in the backward digit span (a working memory test) and the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices. The improved performance in the backward digit span was confirmed in omnivores, with decreased BOLD (Blood Oxygen Level Dependent) effect in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) after 1 week of creatine supplementation (20 g/day for 5 days followed by 5 g/day for 2 days, N=22) (Hammett et al., 2010). Creatine supplementation (20 g/d for 7 days) also prevented the decline in attention that occurred during an acute oxygen deprivation test in a placebo-controlled crossover study with 15 volunteers (Turner et al., 2015).
Biomarkers and long-term labour market outcomes: The case of creatine
2017, Journal of Economic Behavior and OrganizationCitation Excerpt :McMorris et al. (2006, 2007a) found that following significant sleep deprivation with mild exercise, creatine supplementation improved mood and performance in cognitive tasks. Creatine supplementation can also increase backward memory span (Hammett et al., 2010) and cognitive performance of elderly people (McMorris et al., 2007b). In addition, studies based on individuals with inborn errors in creatine production and rat experiments confirm that creatine has an important role in normal brain development and cognitive functioning (for a review see Allen, 2012).
Creatine as a booster for human brain function. How might it work?
2015, Neurochemistry InternationalCitation Excerpt :Although tapping different cognitive domains, both of these tasks rely on speed of processing, potentially addressing the energy requirements in the “initial dip”. The finding of improved performance on backward digit span was subsequently confirmed in omnivores along with the observation of a decreased Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) effect on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) following a week of creatine supplementation (20 g/day for 5 days followed by 5 g/day for 2 days) (Hammett et al., 2010). Conversely, a study giving ∼2 g/day of creatine to 22 healthy young subjects (half received placebo) for six weeks showed no significant change in any of the cognitive domains that were measured, including memory and vigilance (Rawson et al., 2008).
Creatine metabolism and psychiatric disorders: Does creatine supplementation have therapeutic value?
2012, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral ReviewsCitation Excerpt :In older adults (∼76 years of age), creatine buffered age-related cognitive decline, with improvement in verbal and spatial short-term memory and long-term memory after one week of daily supplementation (McMorris et al., 2007b). Most recently, adults supplemented with creatine exhibited better short-term memory and trended towards better abstract reasoning than placebo controls (Hammett et al., 2010). Post-supplementation fMRI Blood oxygen dependent responses were reduced compared to baseline, which indicates reduced metabolic demand, changes in vascular response, increased oxygen uptake, or direct neuromodulatory effects (e.g., modulating glutamatergic or GABAergic receptors).