Adequate levels of vitamins and minerals are essential for optimal neural functioning. A high proportion of individuals, including children, suffer from deficiencies in one or more vitamins or minerals.

A recent UK-based study investigated whether daily supplementation with vitamins/minerals could modulate cognitive performance and mood in healthy children.

In this investigation, eighty-one healthy children aged from 8 to 14 years underwent laboratory assessments of their cognitive performance and mood on the first and last days of 12 weeks’ supplementation with a commercially available vitamins/mineral product. The assesment was done at pre-dose, 1h and 3h post-dose. Interim assessments were also completed at home after 4 and 8 weeks at 3 h post-dose. Each assessment comprised completion of a cognitive battery, which included tasks assessing mood and the speed and accuracy of attention and aspects of memory (secondary, semantic and spatial working memory).

The vitamin/mineral group performed more accurately on two attention tasks: ‘Arrows’ choice reaction time task at 4 and 8 weeks; and ‘Arrow Flankers’ choice reaction time task at 4, 8 and 12 weeks. Picture Recognition errors showed significant decrement at 12 weeks.

While mood was not modulated in any interpretable manner, the author believe that these results suggest that vitamin/mineral supplementation has the potential to improve brain function in healthy children, and warrant further investigation.

British Journal of Nutrition. 100(5):1086-96, 2008 Nov