The researchers said that cutting down your daily calorie intake by 500 calories twice a week can have positive effect on your brain health. The researchers speculated that the benefit could be a link to our ancestors' scrounging capabilities.
"When resources became scarce, our ancestors would have had to scrounge for food. Those whose brains responded best - who remembered where promising sources could be found or recalled how to avoid predators — would have been the ones who got the food. Thus a mechanism linking periods of starvation to neural growth would have evolved", Professor Mark Mattson, head of the institute's laboratory of neurosciences, said.
Source: Medindia