Olive oil, that very special component of the popular Mediterranean diet, is bringing much more to the table than just a little “local color.” Researchers from Temple University have determined that it can actually protect you versus cognitive decline and dementia. Specifically, it protects memory and learning ability and reduces the formation of amyloid-beta plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in the brain. These are all better known as the markers for Alzheimer's disease.

Olive oil's attack on dementia is two-pronged. On the one hand it reduces brain inflammation. On the other, and more significantly, it triggers a process known as autophagy. That's your body's cell-level waste management, during which cells break down and clear out intracellular debris and toxins, such as phosphorylated tau. This is the cause of neurofibrillary “tangles,” which are believed to be contributing to the nerve cell dysfunction in the brain that is responsible for Alzheimer's memory symptoms.

"The thinking is that extra-virgin olive oil is better than fruits and vegetables alone, and as a monounsaturated vegetable fat it is healthier than saturated animal fats," according to the study's senior investigator Domenico Praticò, MD.

The researchers' work was done on mice whom they divided into a group whose diet was enriched with extra-virgin olive oil and a control group. They used a well-established Alzheimer's disease mouse model that takes into account memory impairment, amyloid plagues, and neurofibrillary tangles. The mice living on the extra virgin olive oil-enriched diet performed significantly better on tests designed to evaluate working memory, spatial memory, and learning abilities.

"This is an exciting finding for us," explained Dr. Praticò. "Thanks to the autophagy activation, memory and synaptic integrity were preserved, and the pathological effects in animals otherwise destined to develop Alzheimer's disease were significantly reduced. This is a very important discovery, since we suspect that a reduction in autophagy marks the beginning of Alzheimer's disease."

Next steps? The Temple U team plans to investigate the effects of introducing extra-virgin olive oil into the diet of the same mice when they have already developed plaques and tangles. In this way do they hope to simulate the common circumstance wherein a patient seeing a doctor for the first time due to symptoms of dementia and discovers Alzheimer's disease is already present.

The research has been published in the Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology.