Friday, October 12, 2012

Eat Chocolate and Increase Your Chance of Winning a Nobel Prize


I have been blogging from Sweden the past couple of weeks as a Visiting Professor at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg.

I love this city and my colleagues and the students and staff cannot be more friendly, interesting, and fun!

This week, the 2012 announcements of the Nobel prizes have started and, appropriately, The New England Journal of Medicine has released a study which I suspect may get an Ig Nobel prize, which is awarded at Harvard University each year.

The paper, Chocolate Consumption, Cognitive Function, and Nobel Laureates, written by Dr. Franz H. Messerli, concludes the following:

Chocolate consumption enhances cognitive function, which is a sine qua non for winning the Nobel Prize, and it closely correlates with the number of Nobel laureates in each country. It remains to be determined whether the consumption of chocolate is the underlying mechanism for the observed association with improved cognitive function.

Slate has a great writeup on this scientific article.

I always knew that chocolate made me happier but now I can also say that it is good for my brain.

Above I have posted a photo of the chocolates in one of my favorite sweet shops on Gothenburg.