The Cognitive Effects of the Polyphenol Resveratrol in Young, Healthy Humans: A Review of Six Balanced Crossover, Placebo Controlled, Double Blind Trials

Background: Resveratrol increases cerebral blood flow (CBF) but concomitant improvements to cognitive performance are elusive and may be due to relatively underpowered analyses.

Objective: The current study combines the individual cohorts from x6 individual trials to create one larger, more powerful, sample size to assess a variety of cognitive outcomes.

Design: All trials were placebo controlled, balanced crossover, double blind designs. The combined demographics resulted in a sample size of N=166 with 112 Females and 54 Males between the ages of 18-35 years.

Results: Bonferroni corrected repeated measures ANCOVAs revealed no significant differences on x4 individual cognitive tasks. Paired samples t-tests also showed no effects following collapsing of sub-measures from these tasks into x5 global cognitive measures (Accuracy of attention, Speed of attention, Working memory, Speed of memory, Episodic memory) and the effect sizes were small for all outcomes.

Conclusions: The results of this summary paper definitively confirms that 500 mg resveratrol does not acutely improve a wide range of cognitions in healthy, 18-35 year old humans.