Sugar impacts brains of kids, adults differently

How sugar impacts the brains of kids differs significantly from how it affects the adult brains, a research said.

In adolescents, glucose increases the blood flow in the regions of the brain implicated in reward-motivation and decision-making, whereas in adults, it decreases the blood flow in these regions.

For the study, researchers compared how the brains of adolescents and adults differed in their response to ingestion of a glucose drink.

"While we cannot speculate directly about how glucose ingestion may influence behaviour, certainly we have shown that there are differences in how adults and adolescents respond to glucose," said Ania Jastreboff, an assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine in the US.

This is important because adolescents are the highest consumers of dietary added sugars.

"This is just the first step in understanding what is happening in the adolescent brain in response to the consumption of sugary drinks," Jastreboff added.