Study Uncovers Link Between the Ketogenic Diet and Memory

Medically reviewed by

Dr. Rosmy Barrios, MD

Dr. Rosmy Barrios, MD is an aesthetic medicine specialist whose work focuses on patients who are treated for obesity, metabolic syndrome, and other weight-related issues through nutritional analysis, keto diet programs, and supporting medications.

Updated May 13, 2018 by

Amber Bogdanowicz

Amber is a freelance writer and student based in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. She studies molecular biology at Bloomsburg University, writes for a number of companies about all sorts of cool things, and enjoys reading about new scientific developments. When she’s not in the lab culturing cells or writing, she’s normally enjoying her time with her dogs or hanging out with her family.

News, Science

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Research shows that the ketogenic diet may be able to help improve memory and learning. A study by Robitsek et al. considered the ability of the ketogenic diet to help you retain your memory and ability to learn despite aging when used in conjunction with common antiepileptic drugs. The study focused on examining neurons in the hippocampus^.¹

The Hippocampus

The hippocampus is a structure that’s actually embedded in your brain. This structure plays a large role in learning and memory.² It’s extremely sensitive and can easily be damaged. It’s one of the most extensively studied parts of the brain with its known role in Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, and other neuropsychiatric disorders.

Aging and Spatial Memory

Spatial memory is a common characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) along with mild cognitive impairment, spatial navigation, and rote learning. Mild cognitive impairment refers to forgetting things often, losing your train of thought, the inability to make decisions, depression, anxiety, and irritability.³ Spatial navigation is a process that occurs in the brain which builds ‘thinking maps’ that allow people to determine where they are in an environment.⁴ Rote learning literally refers to an ability to navigate through memory.⁵ In a study of CA3 cell (cells in the hippocampus) activity in older and younger animals, increased communication between CA3 cells indicated cognition impairments, as listed above. ⁶The increase in communication is definitive of a loss of inhibitory control over the hippocampus which results in a decline in spatial memory and cognition in older animals. Thus, age is linked to a decline in spatial memory.

Increased Brain Activity

Again, increased activity of CA3 cells is linked to this process. Also involved are CA1 cells in the hippocampus. This study focused on these cells in aged and young adult rats to see if drugs called LEV (levetiracetam) and VPA (valproic acid), anti-epileptic drugs, could decrease the activity of these cells to improve memory. This study not only told us that LEV and VPA work, and how they do, but also confirmed the role of CA3 and CA1 in memory loss associated with age. Through their study, the researchers found that with aging, the firing of CA3 and CA1 cells did, in fact, increase, and in the presence of LEV and VPA, the firing activity did, in fact, decrease.

How Keto Helps

Multiple studies have considered the effectiveness of using the ketogenic diet and antiepileptic drugs like LEV and VPA together.7 Both the ketogenic diet and these drugs are effective against epilepsy. What does this have to do with aging and memory? Well, VPA and LEV are successful at improving memory by decreasing the activity of CA3 and CA1 cells, and they are successful in epileptic patients who have found marked improvements in the success of their treatments under the conditions of ketosis induced via the ketogenic diet.

In the future, studies will need to study this interaction further, however, the keto diet continues to impress!

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Dr. Rosmy Barrios, MD

This article has been medically reviewed by Dr. Rosmy Barrios, MD.