Boron is an essential trace mineral that is most often associated with bone health. However, boron also plays an important role in mineral and lipid metabolism, energy utilisation and immune function. Only recently has boron obtained mainstream essential status in humans, although in nutritional research it has been known for a long time how important a dietary supply of boron was to the health of animals. Because of its wide ranging role in physiology there are likely many aspects of physiology that are affected by boron nutrition that have not been reported. However as knowledge on the nutritional roles of boron has grown, a role for boron in the correct function of the brain has been suggested by researchers. Such evidence is available from both human and animal studies for example, that shows that boron plays a prominent role in the correct function of the brain. In particular, low boron intakes appear to detrimentally affect electroencephalograms and performance in physical tasks.
For example, in one study1 researchers fed a number of subjects diets that contained varying amounts of boron. The subjects of the first group of experiments were rats and subsequently humans were used in later experiments. The rats and the humans were fed low or high boron diets before having their brain functions tested. The results of the studies showed that boron nutrition had a significant effect on the brain activity of the subjects as measured by encephalograms. Diets that provided low intakes of boron resulted in increases in low frequency brain activity and decreases in high frequency brain activity. These patterns of changes are similar to those seen with malnutrition and heavy metal toxicity. In addition, low boron diets resulted in poorer performance on tasks emphasising manual dexterity, eye-hand-coordination, attention, perception, encoding and short-term memory, compared to high boron diets. These results confirm a role for boron in the central nervous systems of animals and humans.
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