In case anyone needed another reason to love chocolate, a new study suggests that a natural compound found in cocoa, tea and some vegetables can reverse age-related memory loss.The study – published in Nature Neuroscience in 2014 and partly financed by a chocolate company – found that flavanols reverse mild memory loss in older adults. Using brain scans and memory tests, the latest study built on previous work showing that flavanols extracted from cocoa beans had improved neuronal connections in mice’s dentate gyrus, a part of the brain involved in memory formation.But hold that chocolate bar. The researchers also warn that the compound found in cocoa exists only in minuscule amounts in the average chocolate bar compared with the amount used in the study, so gorging on chocolate in the name of health and improving one’s memory could backfire (适得其反).“It would make a lot of people happy, but it would also make them unhealthy,” said Scott A. Small, a professor of neurology and director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Columbia University Medical Center.Small said that even more important, the new study offers the first direct evidence that memory deteriorates with age because of changes in the dentate gyrus (齿状圆), a region of the hippocampus (海马). Previous studies had shown a link between changes in this region of the brain and normal, age-related memory loss, but the Columbia University study asserts a causal link.The study involved 37 healthy subjects who ranged in age from 50 to 69. Researchers said that if a person had the memory of a typical 60-year-old at the beginning of the study, on average that person’s memory would function more like a 30- or 40-year-old’s after three months of being given a high-flavanol diet, consuming 900 milligrams a day. Small said the typical candy bar contains only about 40mg of flavanols. The researchers also cautioned that more work is needed because of the study’s small sample size.The compound appears to enhance connectivity and metabolic activity in the dentate gyrus. Aging appears to reduce the connections between neurons in that part of the brain. That decline, according to Small, however, is not related to severe memory loss and cell death in Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias (痴呆). 1. It can be learned from the passage that flavanol is ___________.A) a kind of cocoa beans that are used to produce chocolateB) a part of the human brain that controls memory formationC) a compound that can reverse age-related memory loss D) a disease in older people that is caused by memory loss2. According to the researchers, eating lots of chocolate bars will ___________.A) trigger growth of cocoa productionB) lead to certain health hazards C) enhance one’s sense of happinessD) prevent serious mental diseases3. The new study is different from previous ones in that ___________.A) it proves the cause of age-related memory loss B) it is the first study to have conducted tests on miceC) it involved both older and middle-aged subjectsD) it discovered a link between different brain functions4. Future research that serves as an improvement over the new study mentioned in the passage may be a study that ___________.A) lasts for a period longer than three monthsB) tests more 30- or 40-year-old subjectsC) uses a diet with a larger amount of chocolateD) contains a larger number of older subjects 5. According to the passage, age-related memory loss can be prevented if ___________.A) the links between certain types of neurons in the brain are cut offB) the connections between neurons in a certain part of the brain increase C) severe memory loss is caused by factors other than cell death in the brainD) cell death and metabolic activity occurs at a slower rate in the dentate gyrus