January 8/Chicago/Chicago Tribune -- Researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago have found that adults who occasionally went hungry during childhood had a slower rate of decline in their cognitive abilities as they aged than those who always had enough to eat as children.
"We didn't expect these results. We thought hunger was related to faster cognitive decline," said lead author Lisa Barnes, a cognitive neuropsychologist at Rush's Alzheimer's Disease Center. "We don't understand what they mean. The biological basis is not known. We know from animal literature that there is evidence that caloric deprivation increases life span. However, it's a big leap to human work.