Ok, I now have the full paper for this. As usual, the article bears no relation whatsoever to the actual study.
They had four rat groups, not two:
1. High sugar / with n-3 (omega-3 fatty acid)
2. Normal sugar / with n-3
3. High sugar / n-3 deficient
4. Normal sugar / n-3 deficient
They assessed the effects of the diets by:
a. Making them do a standard Barnes maze (look it up. It's a bit like the Wasp Factory, only the gruesome death comes later, whichever hole they choose...)
b. Cutting off their little ratty heads with a miniature guillotine, then freezing and dissecting their brains (funny they don't mention that bit in the article)
They found that the rats with diet 3 had impaired cognitive function, as shown by poorer performance in the maze test, and reduced synaptic plasticity (due to some biochemical shit I won't go into here).
All in all a fascinating and thorough study. And combined with another paper I read recently on how high fat diets affect the brain, a rather damning indictment of the industrialized Western diet.
They had four rat groups, not two:
1. High sugar / with n-3 (omega-3 fatty acid)
2. Normal sugar / with n-3
3. High sugar / n-3 deficient
4. Normal sugar / n-3 deficient
They assessed the effects of the diets by:
a. Making them do a standard Barnes maze (look it up. It's a bit like the Wasp Factory, only the gruesome death comes later, whichever hole they choose...)
b. Cutting off their little ratty heads with a miniature guillotine, then freezing and dissecting their brains (funny they don't mention that bit in the article)
They found that the rats with diet 3 had impaired cognitive function, as shown by poorer performance in the maze test, and reduced synaptic plasticity (due to some biochemical shit I won't go into here).
All in all a fascinating and thorough study. And combined with another paper I read recently on how high fat diets affect the brain, a rather damning indictment of the industrialized Western diet.