Chewing gum moderates the vigilance decrement

 Didn't your competent? doctor have you chewing gum before any cognitive testing? NO? So you DON'T HAVE A FUNCTIONING STROKE DOCTOR, DO YOU? 

I bet your doctor HAS BEEN COMPLETELY INCOMPETENT FOR OVER A DECADE!

 I covered a lot of this earlier here:

Chew Yourself a Better Brain March 2012 

The impact of mastication on cognition: evidence for intervention and the role of adult hippocampal neurogenesis April 2016

Effects of chewing on cognitive processing speed - gum April 2013

 But all the negatives here:

6 ways chewing gum is wrecking your health

Send me hate mail on this: oc1dean@gmail.com. I'll print your complete statement with your name and my response in my blog. Or are you afraid to engage with my stroke-addled mind? I'm curious why you don't know more about stroke than a stroke survivor.

The latest one here:

Chewing gum moderates the vigilance decrement

Kate Morgan, Andrew J. Johnson, Christopher Miles

First published: 12 March 2013

https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12025

Citations: 19

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Abstract

We examine the impact of chewing gum on a Bakan-type vigilance task that requires the continual updating of short-term order memory. Forty participants completed a 30-min auditory Bakan-task either with, or without, the requirement to chew gum. Self-rated measures of mood were taken both pre- and post-task. As expected, the vigilance task produced a time-dependent performance decrement indexed via decreases in target detections and lengthened correct reaction times (RTs), and a reduction in post-task self-rated alertness scores. The declines in both performance and subjective alertness were attenuated in the chewing-gum group. In particular, correct RTs were significantly shorter following the chewing of gum in the latter stages of the task. Additionally, the gradients of decline for target detection and incline for correct RTs were both attenuated for the chewing-gum group. These findings are consistent with the data of Tucha and Simpson (2011), Appetite, 56, 299–301, who showed beneficial effects of chewing gum in the latter stages of a 30 min visual attention task, and extend their data to a task that necessitates the continuous updating of order memory. It is noteworthy that our data contradict the claim (Kozlov, Hughes, & Jones, 2012, Q. J. Exp. Psychology, 65, 501–513) that chewing gum negatively impacts short-term memory task performance.

AXIM bags pot discount for gum to treat multiple sclerosis - spasticity

You'll have to convince your neanderthal legislators to legalize marijuana completely to be able to use this. Medical marijuana is a farce for stroke because states list the diseases it can be used for not the clinical research results. Too bad the nicotine gum got cancelled, we could have stroke survivors blowing bubbles to their recovery. And if we had anything approaching a decent stroke association we could have them patenting stroke recovery products.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cannabis-axim-idUSKBN0UI17H20160104

AXIM Biotechnologies Inc, a small, Manhattan-based company with ties to the Netherlands, says it has a trump card in its quest to develop a cannabis-based chewing gum to ease the symptoms of multiple sclerosis.
The company says it will be able to price its gum cheaper than a major competitor after securing a "significant" discount on cannabis made available by the Dutch government, which has a policy of promoting the drug for medicinal use.
To be sure, AXIM has a long way to go before its Medchew Rx gum - still in the pre-clinical stage of development - will be a viable alternative to an under-the-tongue spray developed by GW Pharmaceuticals Plc.
That spray, called Sativex, is already approved in 27 countries - though not the United States, where cannabis remains prohibited under federal law.
There is no cure for multiple sclerosis, or MS, which affects about 400,000 people in the United States. About 80 percent of patients suffer from spasticity, a condition often treated with the muscle relaxant baclofen.
Existing oral therapies offer limited relief from spasticity and pain and come with side-effects such as muscle weakness. Botox, an injectable alternative, offers localized treatment and is costly.
Provided treatment is regulated, cannabis could be therapeutic for MS patients, said Dr. Paul Wright, chair of neurology at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York.
"I do believe that there's a role for it," he said, "but I am fearful of the potential for abuse."
AXIM's gum and GW's spray are both designed to offer more consistent relief than artisanal products derived from cannabis that are smoked or eaten and are legal only in parts of the United States.
A typical British patient takes four sprays of Sativex daily at a cost of about 5.56 pounds ($8.24). But state health systems in some countries, including GW's home market, do not consider the drug sufficiently cost-effective to justify coverage.
Lekhram Changoer, AXIM's Dutch chief technology officer, said the company would be able to pass on the discount from its Dutch-sourced cannabis to customers. He declined to estimate an exact price.
Dr. Marco van de Velde, head of the Dutch health ministry's office for medicinal cannabis, said the government was making the drug available to AXIM and other companies. He declined to give further details.
For its part, GW - a pioneer in the development of natural cannabis-derived medicine - has no immediate plans to source cannabis from the Netherlands. The company grows its own plants at a secret location in England.
"Breeding our plant is something that's absolutely essential to our competitive position," said GW spokesman Stephen Schultz.
AXIM, which started out in the organic waste business before reinventing itself last year, hopes its mint-flavored gum will be on sale in the United States as early as 2017.
This will depend on whether the Food and Drug Administration grants an accelerated development timeline that would allow it to leapfrog GW, which is waiting to discuss with the agency if and how a late-stage study for Sativex will proceed.
AXIM thinks its case could be bolstered by research already undertaken by GW, which has established "evidence of safety" for its drugs derived from natural cannabis.
The FDA said it would not comment on any specific drug.

Effects of chewing on cognitive processing speed - gum

Another item for our doctors to add to their vast repertoire of stroke rehab. You do want your survivor to be alert and have better cognitive performance, don't you? The downside would be swallowing the gum, questioning your doctor. Ok, this will never occur unless you're willing to create a gum that has a safety line so it can't be swallowed. Bazooka Joe for me.

I covered a lot of this earlier here:

Chew Yourself a Better Brain

The latest one here:

Effects of chewing on cognitive processing speed - gum

Abstract

In recent years, chewing has been discussed as producing effects of maintaining and sustaining cognitive performance. We have reported that chewing may improve or recover the process of working memory; however, the mechanisms underlying these phenomena are still to be elucidated. We investigated the effect of chewing on aspects of attention and cognitive processing speed, testing the hypothesis that this effect induces higher cognitive performance. Seventeen healthy adults (20-34 years old) were studied during attention task with blood oxygenation level-dependent functional (fMRI) at 3.0 T MRI. The attentional network test (ANT) within a single task fMRI containing two cue conditions (no cue and center cue) and two target conditions (congruent and incongruent) was conducted to examine the efficiency of alerting and executive control. Participants were instructed to press a button with the right or left thumb according to the direction of a centrally presented arrow. Each participant underwent two back-to-back ANT sessions with or without chewing gum, odorless and tasteless to remove any effect other than chewing. Behavioral results showed that mean reaction time was significantly decreased during chewing condition, regardless of speed-accuracy trade-off, although there were no significant changes in behavioral effects (both alerting and conflict effects). On the other hand, fMRI analysis revealed higher activations in the anterior cingulate cortex and left frontal gyrus for the executive network and motor-related regions for both attentional networks during chewing condition. These results suggested that chewing induced an increase in the arousal level and alertness in addition to an effect on motor control and, as a consequence, these effects could lead to improvements in cognitive performance.

Alert Energy Caffeine Gum

This puts together the wonderful effects of caffeine for your cognitive rehab and the chewing gum rehab you should be doing. Whats not to like? It will take 50 years to get to a stroke protocol and in the Joint Commission procedures. Unless you want to tell your doctor right now. All they have to do is add nicotine and they would have the miracle gum for most of your stroke rehab.

Alert Energy Caffeine Gum

May 10,2013 update

Wrigley halts production of caffeine gum

Damn what am I going to do for my caffeine fix for my next stroke?

Chewing during chronic stress ameliorates stress-induced suppression of neurogenesis in the hippocampal dentate gyrus in aged SAMP8 mice

So maybe the mice need to be chewing gum for mastication-induced arousal. Better blood flow to the brain.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304394012008658

Abstract

Chronic stress suppresses neurogenesis in the hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG). Chewing under chronic stress is reported to suppress stress-induced responses. We examined whether chewing under restraint stress prevents restraint stress-induced suppression of neurogenesis in the hippocampal DG in aged senescence-accelerated prone (SAMP8) mice. Restraint stress increased plasma corticosterone levels, and suppressed cell proliferation, survival, and differentiation of newborn cells in the hippocampal DG. In contrast, chewing under restraint stress prevented the increase in plasma corticosterone levels, and ameliorated the suppression of cell proliferation, survival, and differentiation of newborn cells in the hippocampal DG. These results suggest that chewing under restraint stress prevents the stress-induced increase in plasma corticosterone levels, leading to the inhibition of stress-induced suppression of neurogenesis in the hippocampal dentate gyrus.

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Highlights

► Effects of chewing under restraint stress on neurogenesis are not known. ► Chewing under stress prevents stress-induced increase in plasma corticosterone levels. ► Chewing under restraint stress ameliorates stress-induced suppression of neurogenesis. ► Chewing is a good strategy to cope with chronic stress.

Gummed-up memory: chewing gum impairs short-term recall.

You can ask your doctor to compare this one to the mastication induced arousal one I posted about earlier.
From http://io9.com/5905964/chewing-gum-can-mess-with-your-mind
comes this suggestion.
So what might explain these contradictory results? The scientists at Cardiff noted they used flavorless gum, while the past study used minty gum. Flavor might make a key difference — the brain might better remember tasks linked with pleasant experiences such as nice flavors.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22150606?dopt=Abstract

Abstract

Several studies have suggested that short-term memory is generally improved by chewing gum. However, we report the first studies to show that chewing gum impairs short-term memory for both item order and item identity. Experiment 1 showed that chewing gum reduces serial recall of letter lists. Experiment 2 indicated that chewing does not simply disrupt vocal-articulatory planning required for order retention: Chewing equally impairs a matched task that required retention of list item identity. Experiment 3 demonstrated that manual tapping produces a similar pattern of impairment to that of chewing gum. These results clearly qualify the assertion that chewing gum improves short-term memory. They also pose a problem for short-term memory theories asserting that forgetting is based on domain-specific interference given that chewing does not interfere with verbal memory any more than tapping. It is suggested that tapping and chewing reduce the general capacity to process sequences.

Chew Yourself a Better Brain

What a simple research test this would be. And cheap enough for anyone to implement. Remember, no self diagnosis or medication.
Just think of all the dangers involved. Walking and chewing gum needs to be doctor supervised properly.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2012/03/08/chew-yourself-a-better-brain/
Selected paragraphs here:

Gum has been studied for its beneficial effects on memory, alertness, anxiety reduction, appetite suppression, mood and learning. Attributes of gum that have gone under the microscope include its flavor, texture and density, to name a few.

The hunch that spawned gum studies was that chewing gum might increase blood flow to the brain, and that may in turn spark other important effects. Studies like this one out of Cardiff University in the UK take a comprehensive view of gum’s potential across multiple areas: learning, mood, memory and intelligence. The findings in this case were that both alertness and intellectual performance were increased in gum-chewing subjects, while memory showed no significant improvements.

Other studies, like the one highlighted in this New Scientist article, have found that some aspects of memory seem to be improved by chewing gum, particularly immediate and delayed word recall, while others are not.

An especially significant 2011 study, reported on by Live Science, found that chewing gum before taking a test improved performance, but chewing gum throughout the test did not. The possible reason for this result is that chewing gum may warm-up the brain, something gum researchers refer to as ”mastication-induced arousal.” In fact, chewing gum for about 20 minutes is on par with mild exercise in terms of sending more blood to the brain. Continuing to chew after the warm-up period seems to have required too much jaw-work, and burning more energy negated the benefits.

Studies have also found gum to be an effective anxiety buster, though the reasons why are anything but clear. This 2009 study, for instance, found that under laboratory conditions chewing gum resulted in reduced cortisol levels (cortisol is frequently called the ”stress hormone”) and a reduction in overall anxiety.