CoQ10 and Cognition a Review and Study Protocol for a 90-Day Randomized Controlled Trial Investigating the Cognitive Effects of Ubiquinol in the Healthy Elderly.

Introduction: With an aging population there is an important need for the development of effective treatments for the amelioration of cognitive decline. Multiple mechanisms underlie age-related cognitive decline including cerebrovascular disease, oxidative stress, reduced antioxidant capacity and mitochondrial dysfunction. CoQ10 is a novel treatment which has the potential to improve brain function in healthy elderly populations due to established beneficial effects on mitochondrial function, vascular function and oxidative stress. Methods and Analysis: We describe the protocol for a 90-day randomized controlled trial which examines the efficacy of Ubiquinol (200 mg/day) vs. placebo for the amelioration of cognitive decline in a healthy (non-demented) elderly sample, aged 60 years and over. The primary outcome is the effect of Ubiquinol at 90 days compared to baseline on CogTrack composite measures of cognition. Additional cognitive measures, as well as measures of cardiovascular function, oxidative stress, liver function and mood will also be monitored across 30-, 60- and 90- day time points. Data analyses will involve repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). Discussion: This study will be the first of its kind to provide important clinical and mechanistic data regarding the efficacy of Ubiquinol as a treatment for age-related cognitive decline in the healthy elderly with important implications for productivity and quality of life within this age group. Clinical Trial Registration: The trial has been registered with the Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTRN12618001841268).

Working memory load affects early affective responses to concrete and abstract words differently: Evidence from ERPs.

Early posterior negativity (EPN) is an early-occurring, event-related, potential that is elicited by pictures and words that have highly arousing characteristics. Whilst EPN has been found with words presented in isolation several times, different types of words have shown quite different effects across different types of tasks. One possible reason for this is that memory and attentional demands may affect the way semantic features of words are processed, and this may modulate EPN. This was investigated in a silent reading task using abstract and concrete words of negative and neutral valence and a dual phonological working memory task to manipulate memory load. The results showed that abstract but not concrete words elicited EPN, and this may have affected downstream processing. Further analyses examining alpha desynchronization showed that negative concrete words appeared to be significantly affected by the memory load manipulation, unlike negative abstract words. These results provide evidence that the processing of features in negative concrete words is more affected by working memory and attentional demands than the processing of features in negative abstract words, and this may be responsible for the failure of negative concrete words to elicit EPN in this study. Thus, the extent to which words elicit EPN appears to be dependent on both their semantic representations and competing cognitive processes. These results provide a potential explanation for some of the differences that have been reported in previous experiments as well as insight into how memory and attention can affect the processing of the semantic features of words.