Fastest gum in the test

If you’ve got an exam or test coming up then you might be chewing over the best way to prepare yourself. As it turns out, chewing it over is the best thing you could be doing.

In a new study from St Lawrence University participants were given a series of tests aimed at testing thinking ability. Some of the subjects chewed gum for five minutes before taking the test while others did not chew gum. Those who chewed gum did significantly better for the first fifteen to twenty minutes of the task. After twenty minutes the results evened out between the chewers and non-chewers.

This is by no means the first study to show that chewing gum improves mental performance.

Researchers from the University of Northumbria have found that people who chewed gum did 36 per cent on memory recall tests than people who did not chew. Similar results were found at Cornell University. So what is it about gum chewing that boosts the brain?

The researchers of the latest study suggest that chewing gum might be producing a “mastication-induced arousal”. They conjecture that any physical activity piques arousal, and chewing is a form of physical activity. The reason the benefit drops off after twenty minutes of continuing to chew gum according to them, is that chewing and thinking might share mental resources. So in short, you can’t think and chew at the same time.

There are other theories as to why chewing might help thinking and memory.

Following on from the arousal theory, is the proven fact that chewing increases heart rate. An increase in heart rate will increase blood flow to the brain and hence improve brain function.

Still another possibility is that the hippocampus is involved. The hippocampus is a part of your brain involved in memory. There are receptors for insulin in the hippocampus and evidence shows that activity increases in the hippocampus when you chew. If insulin receptors in the hippocampus are involved in memory then chewing might well prime the hippocampus and therefore promote memory.

While the link between chewing, gum or whatever, seems clear, the mechanism is less certain. We’ll just have to continue to chew on that one for a while.