University of Wuppertal, Department of Psychology, Wuppertal, Germany.
Nutr Diabetes. 2022 Mar 14;12(1):10. doi: 10.1038/s41387-022-00191-6.
Existing evidence on the effects of glucose supplementation on cognitive performance appears inconclusive. Metabolic switching offers an approach to explain such incoherent findings based on differences in cognitive functioning after fasting. We propose a new construct, cognitive glucose sensitivity (CGS), which quantifies individual performance gain due to glucose supplementation. We tested the hypothesis that the effects of glucose ingestion depend on CGS, cognitive task domain, and sex. In addition, the relationship between CGS and body mass index (BMI) was examined. Seventy-one participants (48 female) were tested in two conditions each (deprivation baseline vs. glucose supplementation), performing tasks from different cognitive domains (memory and executive functioning). We found significant evidence for a correlation of deprivation baseline performance and CGS across domains (Corsi-Block-Tapping Task: r = -0.57, p < 0.001; Go-No-Go Task: r = 0.39, p = 0.001; word list recall: r = -0.50, p < 0.001). Moreover, individual CGS differed significantly between tasks (p = 0.018). Only in men, BMI was significantly related to CGS in a word recall paradigm (r = 0.49, p = 0.017). Our findings support the notion that the effects of glucose depend on CGS, task domain, and sex. The effort to reduce performance impairment (short-term) might sacrifice independence from external glucose (long term), possibly via declining blood glucose regulation. Therefore, CGS could be regarded as a candidate to enhance our understanding of the etiology of unhealthy eating.
关于葡萄糖补充对认知表现影响的现有证据似乎尚无定论。代谢转换提供了一种方法，可以根据禁食后认知功能的差异来解释这些不一致的发现。我们提出了一个新的概念，即认知葡萄糖敏感性（CGS），它量化了由于葡萄糖补充而导致的个体表现提高。我们假设葡萄糖摄入的效果取决于 CGS、认知任务领域和性别。此外，还检查了 CGS 与体重指数（BMI）之间的关系。71 名参与者（48 名女性）在两种条件下（剥夺基线与葡萄糖补充）进行了测试，执行了来自不同认知领域（记忆和执行功能）的任务。我们发现，在各个领域中，剥夺基线表现和 CGS 之间存在显著的相关性（Corsi-Block-Tapping 任务：r=-0.57，p<0.001；Go-No-Go 任务：r=0.39，p=0.001；单词列表回忆：r=-0.50，p<0.001）。此外，个体 CGS 在任务之间存在显著差异（p=0.018）。只有在男性中，BMI 在单词回忆范式中与 CGS 显著相关（r=0.49，p=0.017）。我们的发现支持这样一种观点，即葡萄糖的影响取决于 CGS、任务领域和性别。为了减少表现障碍（短期）而做出的努力可能会牺牲对外部葡萄糖的独立性（长期），这可能是通过血糖调节下降来实现的。因此，CGS 可以被视为增强我们对不健康饮食病因理解的候选者。
