Wasabi may be good for more than adding a kick to your sushi.

A study published in Nutrients found that a naturally occurring compound in wasabi may help improve certain types of memory in older adults.

Researchers recruited 72 healthy Japanese adults between ages 60 and 80 and randomly assigned them to take either a wasabi extract supplement or a placebo every day for 12 weeks.

The supplement contained 6-MSITC, a bioactive compound found in wasabi that has been studied for its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.

Before and after the 12 weeks, researchers tested participants across a range of cognitive abilities, including memory, attention, processing speed, reasoning, and executive function.

Those who took the wasabi supplement showed significant improvements in working memory, which helps us temporarily hold and use information, and episodic memory, which involves remembering past experiences and events.

Participants taking 6-MSITC performed better on tests involving tasks such as recalling stories and matching people’s faces with their names compared with those taking the placebo.

The benefits were also fairly specific. Researchers did not find significant improvements in other areas, including attention, processing speed, short-term memory, reasoning, or executive function.

The researchers suggested that 6-MSITC’s antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties could potentially play a role in supporting brain function, although the study did not directly test why the improvements occurred.

And before you start piling extra wasabi onto every meal, there’s an important catch: participants took a standardized wasabi extract supplement containing 0.8 milligrams of 6-MSITC, so the study does not show that simply eating wasabi will produce the same effect.

The study was also relatively small and included only healthy older Japanese adults, meaning more research is needed to understand whether the findings apply to broader populations.

Still, the results offer an interesting first look at how a familiar Japanese ingredient, and one of its naturally occurring compounds, could potentially play a role in supporting memory as we age.