Effect of Peppermint Aroma on Short Term Memory and Cognition in Healthy Volunteers

Introduction: Aroma therapy is one of the method used to improve alertness, memory and mood enhancements. The previous study conducted on patients suffering from dementia has shown positive effect sleep and improvement in behavior. This pilot study was conducted with Peppermint aroma to see the effect on psychomotor skill and cognitive function.

Method: This study was carried out in the department of Physiology,Narayana Medical College, and Nellore.26 young male adults were selected for the study age between 20-30yrs. All the subjects underwent battery of psychomotor and cognitive tests. The tests were conducted in the morning hours of the day between 9 A.M. -11.00A.M.

Results: The preliminary analysis of the data showed marked improvement in the Visual and Auditory reaction time which was statistically significant and the p-values are <0.01 and 0.005 respectively. The CFF frequency and the short term memory test did not show any change in the results and also found to be not significant statistically. The counting number test shows remarkable improvement which is significant (P- <0.001) which suggests enhancement in concentration with peppermint aroma exposure.

Conclusion: we found improvement in Auditory and Visual reaction time and Number countdown test which were statistically significant. This suggests peppermint aroma exposure even for a short time such as 5 min improves math function to a great extent.