For years, practitioners of alternative medicine have been touting the benefits of ginkgo, especially for maintaining brain health, but a new study finds that the centuries-old nostrum does little to slow the cognitive decline of aging.

Researchers at six universities across the U.S., led by Dr. Steven DeKosky at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, report that elderly people taking ginkgo supplements showed no notable differences in scores on brain-function tests from people taking placebo pills. The team, which published its results Tuesday, Dec. 29, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, tested volunteers on a range of tasks, including memory, attention, language, and visual and spatial constructions, and found that the extract from the ancient tree did little to slow the decline of these functions

via Study: Ginkgo Does Not Slow Cognitive Decline of Aging – TIME.