UK Edition 
Eating cinnamon could improve your ability to learn – study
Good news for anyone keen on cinnamon – a new study has provided an excuse to eat more of it.
Researchers at The Rush University Medical Center in California say it could help one’s ability to learn. In an experiment on laboratory mice, rodents with poor learning ability were found to show improvement after being fed ground cinnamon.
The rodents’ bodies metabolized the spice into sodium benzoate, a chemical used in treatments for brain damage. When the chemical entered into the brain, it promoted changed that led to improvement in memory and learning.
"We have successfully used cinnamon to reverse biochemical, cellular and anatomical changes that occur in the brains of mice with poor learning," said Kalipada Pahan, lead researcher and Professor of Neurology at Rush
"We need to further test this approach in poor learners. If these results are replicated in poor learning students, it would be a remarkable advance."
In an earlier study Professor Pahan and colleagues determined that cinnamon could reverse changes in the brains of mice with Parkinson's disease.
The researchers looked at two types of cinnamon widely available in the United States -- Chinese and Ceylon.
"Although both types of cinnamon are metabolized into sodium benzoate, we have seen that Ceylon cinnamon is much more pure than Chinese cinnamon, as the latter contains coumarin, a hepatotoxic (liver damaging) molecule," Pahan said.
• If the research has you reaching for the cinnamon, here's a recipe to set you going: Yeast-free quick cinnamon buns