Reviewing the effects of dietary salt on cognition: mechanisms and future directions

Consumption of salt exceeds dietary guidelines for many countries around the world, despite efforts to increase awareness of the potential cardiovascular health risks. Emerging evidence, primarily from rodent models, indicates that high salt intake may also impair aspects of cognitive function. To our knowledge, here we provide the first review of the effects of salt on cognition. To review literature on the effects of high-salt diets on cognitive measures across human and non-human animal research to generate targeted questions for future studies.

Non-systematic literature review of studies manipulating (in rodents) or measuring (in humans) salt intake and assessing performance on cognitive measures.

Studies in humans have focused on older populations and show mixed associations between salt intake and cognitive performance. By contrast, most rodent studies have found impairments in cognition following chronic consumption of high-salt (typically 7-8%) diets. Most report impairments in tasks assessing spatial memory with corresponding increases in hippocampal oxidative stress and inflammatory responses originating in the gut. Notably, several rodent studies reported that high-salt diets impaired cognitive function in the absence of blood pressure changes.

Contrasting results from human and animal studies emphasise the need for further studies to clarify whether salt intake affects cognition. Testing cognition in high-salt diet models that induce hypertension will increase the translatability of future studies in rodents. A challenge for research in humans is isolating the effects of salt from those of fat and sugar that tend to co-occur in 'western' diets.