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A junk food diet can cause long-term damage to adolescent brains
Rats fed a diet full of fat, sugar in adolescence suffered memory impairment.
People who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease tend to have lower levels of a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine in the brain that is essential for memory and functions such as learning, attention, arousal and involuntary muscle movement. Kanoski said that in another round of the study, the research team examined whether the memory damage in rats raised on the junk food diet could be reversed with medication that induces the release of acetylcholine. In addition to Kanoski and Hayes, the team included other USC Dornsife researchers Logan Tierno Lauer, Alicia E. Kao, Molly E. Klug, Linda Tsan, Jessica J. Rea, Keshav S. Subramanian, Cindy Gu, Arun Ahuja, Kristen N. Donohue and Léa Décarie-Spain; Natalie Tanios of Keck School of Medicine of USC; as well as Anthony A. Fodor and Shan Sun of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
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