MEDICINAL PLANTS EXPENDED IN THE TRADITIONAL AND AYURVEDA FOR THE ENHANCEMENT OF LEARNING AND MEMORY DISORDERS: AN OVERVIEW

Chintha Venkataramaiah and Wudayagiri Rajendra*

ABSTRACT

Learning and memory disorders, in general, are associated with brain trauma, neurodegenerative, or as a part of physiological aging. Aging in humans is generally associated with deterioration of cognitive performance and, in particular, learning and memory. Different therapeutic approaches are available to treat cognitive impairment and neurodegenerative or psychiatric disorders. However, a very few synthetic drugs are currently approved by regulatory authorities for treating multi-factorial ailments and disorders of cognition. Synthetic drugs are known to cause undesirable adverse effects, whereas natural products are considered safe and effective. Ayurveda has quite sophisticated divergence of medicinal plants with dominant pharmacological / therapeutic activities on cognition and mental functions etc. Traditional herbal medicines, either directly as supplements or indirectly in the form of food, improve brain functions including learning, memory and attention and quality of life with either no or limited side effects. More than a hundred herbal medicinal plants have been traditionally used for learning and memory improvement, but only a few have been tested in randomized clinical trials and remaining have to be systematically evaluated through a multidisciplinary approach. Keeping in the view of relative importance of medicinal plants, here we will enumerate those medicinal plants that show positive effects on various cognitive functions in learning and memory and discuss briefly the specific medicinal plants that have promising experimental data or initial clinical data and might have potential to reach a clinical trial in near future.

Keywords: Ayurvedic & Traditional medicine; Cognition; Human ailments; Synthetic drugs.