As you can see if you click to zoom the image above, there are some interesting features to the results. First of all, don't misinterpret the flatline on the right. That's me going on a road trip for a week and not wanting to mess up the statistics by playing in a different environment; I only played once more, on day 40.
Secondly, the most statistically significant improvement was in the area of mental flexibility, that is, switching between tasks as rapidly as possible, for example switching between analyzing numbers to analyzing letters, or from shapes to colors. Placebo played essentially no role here, as I neither expected nor particularly desired such an outcome. But what this means at the level of curcumin targetting is beyond my comprehension.
Memory also showed a modest improvement. It's important to keep in mind here that Lumosity's notion of memory means very short exposure followed by non-time-limited recall. For example, you flash some different colored squares at me, then I click all the ones that were blue before being hidden. The trouble with all this is that it's not a realistic episodic memory ("street memory") metric. In real life, I would have much more exposure time, but also might need to recall the details at many future times, and sometimes instantly, for example "Hello Mr... uh... uh... Smith".
So what about street memory performance? In short, it improved in some obvious ways, with some caveats. My word recall is better, particularly for older information, which manifests in more fluid conversation. My visual memory has also significantly improved since I previously reported that it had crapped out rather severely, and Lumosity seems to agree. But the failure modes are informative: my most obvious memory failures involve gaps in visual memory. For example, I can remember a street I visited an hour ago, and the one that I visited just a minute ago, but sometimes I can't recall one of the streets in between. The simplest explanation I can think of is that some plaque clearance has occurred, leaving a few blobs of it here and there. The net effect is that my episodic memory has improved, but once in a while my brain tries to encode a new memory on top of a blob of residual plaque, which subsequently fails to decode correctly.
I also seem to require more exposures to new information in order to capture it, for example, hearing a name 3 times instead of once. I ascribe this particular failure mode to SSRI effects: the price of enhanced long term potentiation is the requirement for more neurotransmitter current in order to encode new information, rather like steering an aircraft carrier. This doesn't effect visual memory so much because we spend a rather long time looking at the same scene, although even in that case, I sometimes fail to encode rapid events, for instance, putting my drink on the table quickly.
I suppose the most profound and frankly unexpected evidence of improved street memory is the "parking lot test". I hardly ever forget where I parked anymore. Previously, I would remember only about half of the time. I remember many wasted minutes walking up and down the aisles, clicking my electronic key, hoping for my car to respond. Now, at worst, I'm off by a few meters. But is this due to improved memory, or improved attention to where I parked to begin with? I don't know, but it's definitely welcome. For the record, it took 2 or 3 weeks for this to manifest. At first, I thought it was luck, but now it has gone well beyond statistical signicance.
There has been one recurrent and bizarre effect that I should report. For a long time now, I've been used to occasional unpleasant surprises, for example, opening the microwave to heat my tea, only to find that I had already done so, with the tea long since cooled. But a couple weeks into megadose Longvida, the opposite happened: I would fail to remember heating my tea, but suspect that I had in fact done so, only to open the microwave and find it empty. It started to occur with greater and greater frequency, until now neither phenomenon seems to occur all that often (unless it involves a quick and mundane act, like putting a drink on the table or locking the door). Perhaps what this tells me is that my memory failures had led my brain to compensate in a subtle way by forming conclusions from vague suspicions. After all, if you have a poor memory, and some foggy notion that you put your tea in the microwave, then there's a good chance that you actually did. But if your memory improves, it takes some time for your brain to be more demanding of evidence from memory. So in the meantime, you find yourself mistaking past events (like putting my tea in the microwave yesterday) for current ones. If this happens to you, don't freak out. Let your brain recalibrate.
I think it's noteworthy that speed and problem solving skills didn't really change. I don't know what this means. But in practice, I would say that curcumin has slowed my mental processing somewhat. I find this acceptable in exchange for the memory benefit otherwise.
And what do I think about dose? My gut feeling is that anything over 10 pills is probably not useful because it's not well absorbed. Indeed, a couple times, I felt like the stuff went right through me. (Trust me, do not take Longvida mixed with coconut oil on an empty stomach! Stirring it up in hot tea or coffee seems more effective.)
After a few days of no curcumin, I'll switch to Solgar Broad Spectrum Curcumin. Thanks to jefferson for pointing out some persuasive rodent data which suggests that it's worth a try.
I'm currently evaluating some unrelated therapeutic options and will report back when I start a new regimen.
Edited by resveratrol_guy, 17 July 2015 - 06:03 PM.
