Dr. Jack Feldman

So we can imagine that when we're listening to something, if it's louder, we can hear it better, or if there's less noise, we can hear it better.

And he wanted to investigate this.

So he did this in tissue culture of hippocampal neurons.

And what he found was that if he lowered the background activity in all of the neurons—

that the LTP he elicited got stronger.

And the way he did that was increasing the level of magnesium in the bathing solution.

So he played around with the magnesium and he found out that when the magnesium was elevated, there was more LTP.

All right, that's an observation in a tissue culture.

So he tested this in mice and basically he offered them a...

He had control mice, which got a normal diet and one that had one enriched with magnesium.

And the ones that lived enriched with magnesium had higher cognitive function, lived longer, everything you'd want in some magic pill.

Those mice did that.

Excuse me, rats.

The problem was that you couldn't imagine taking this into humans because most magnesium salts don't passively get from the gut into the bloodstream into the brain.

They pass via what's called a transporter.

Transporter is something in a membrane that grabs

a magnesium molecule or atom and pulls it into the other side.

So if you imagine you have magnesium in your gut, you have transporters that pull the magnesium into the gut, into the bloodstream.

Well, if you had taken normal magnesium supplement that you can buy at the pharmacy, it doesn't cross the gut very easily.

And if you would take enough of it to get it in your bloodstream, you start getting diarrhea.