Summary: Regular tea drinking was linked with more efficient brain structural connectivity and stronger functional connectivity within the default mode network. The results indicate that habitual tea consumption may support brain organization and help protect against age-related decline.
Source: Impact Journals
Overview: Researchers recruited healthy older adults and divided them into two groups based on long-term tea-drinking habits to examine the impact of habitual tea consumption on brain organization. Using multimodal neuroimaging, the team evaluated both structural and functional brain networks to determine how tea drinking relates to large-scale connectivity patterns.
The principal finding was that habitual tea drinking was associated with a more efficient structural network organization, indicating that regular tea consumption may benefit the brain’s white-matter network topology. Additionally, the study observed a reduction in hemispheric asymmetry within the structural connectivity network among tea drinkers. In contrast, tea drinking did not produce a significant effect on overall hemispheric asymmetry in the functional connectivity network.
At the regional level, the tea-drinking group showed stronger functional connectivity within the default mode network (DMN), a set of brain regions linked to memory and internally directed thought. Structural connectivity within the DMN displayed both increases and decreases in connection strength, suggesting a more complex pattern of structural remodeling accompanying the observed functional changes.
Dr. Junhua Li and Dr. Lei Feng noted the long cultural history of tea consumption: “Tea has been a popular beverage since antiquity, with records referring to consumption dating back to the dynasty of Shen Nong (approximately 2700 BC) in China.” The authors emphasize that tea is consumed widely across Asia in many forms, and its combined natural constituents may act together to benefit cognitive health.
Prior research has often focused on individual tea compounds or on behavioral and neuropsychological outcomes. Those studies sometimes found modest or inconsistent effects when single constituents were tested in isolation, while mixtures or whole-tea preparations tended to show stronger benefits. Reviews of clinical and preclinical data have reported neuroprotective effects of herbal tea in most studies examined, but direct neuroimaging investigations that evaluate whole-brain interregional connectivity have been scarce.
Unlike studies that concentrate on isolated brain regions, this investigation focused on system-level interactions across the whole brain. By combining structural (likely diffusion-based) and functional (resting-state) measures, the authors were able to compare global and regional network properties and to identify where tea-related differences emerged.
The research team concluded: “Our study comprehensively investigated the effects of tea drinking on brain connectivity at both global and regional scales using multi-modal imaging data and provided the first compelling evidence that tea drinking positively contributes to brain structure, making network organization more efficient.” These findings support the idea that regular tea consumption may have a protective influence on the aging brain’s network architecture, particularly in structural organization and in maintaining DMN functional connectivity.
Source:
Duke University
Media Contacts:
Junhua Li – Impact Journals
Image Source:
Image credit: Junhua Li and Lei Feng.
Original Research: Open access
“Habitual tea drinking modulates brain efficiency: evidence from brain connectivity evaluation”. Junhua Li, Rafael Romero-Garcia, John Suckling, Lei Feng. Aging. DOI: 10.18632/aging.102023.
Abstract
Habitual tea drinking modulates brain efficiency: evidence from brain connectivity evaluation
Most research on tea and cognition has relied on neuropsychological assessments, with relatively few studies using neuroimaging to evaluate interregional brain connections. This study recruited healthy older adults and grouped them by long-term tea-drinking frequency to examine both functional and structural brain networks. Results indicated that habitual tea drinking was linked to more efficient structural brain organization but did not show a significant benefit for global functional organization. Tea drinking was associated with reduced hemispheric asymmetry in structural connectivity, while no significant effect was observed for functional hemispheric asymmetry. Functionally, the default mode network showed stronger connectivity among tea drinkers, whereas structural connections within the DMN exhibited mixed increases and decreases. Overall, this work provides initial evidence that regular tea consumption contributes positively to brain structure and may help protect against age-related declines in brain organization.