The next time you're feeling a craving for chocolate, it might be coming from your brain. According to a study published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, chocolate works to improve blood flow to the brain in seniors. Among a group of 60 people with an average age of 73, drinking two cups of cocoa per day for 30 days resulted in an 8.3 percent increase in blood flow to the brain, and significant improvement on tests of memory and thinking skills. A control group showed no change over the same period.

No more Methuselahs? Americans say no to much-longer lives

With a rapidly changing medical landscape, the Pew Research Center asked Americans if they would want to live decades longer - to age 120 or beyond - if medical treatments were available to slow aging. A majority, 56 percent, said no, although two-thirds (68 percent) of respondents thought that other people would choose to live the extra decades. The survey did not give any information on how longer age spans would be achieved or how healthy a 120-year-old would be in this scenario. The responses don't mean that Americans would reject longer lives altogether, though. The median age that respondents would like to live to was 90, about 11 years longer than the current American life span.

Famous faces test for dementia

Could you recognize Albert Einstein, Oprah Winfrey and John F. Kennedy? That's the question doctors are asking in a study published in Neurology. Whether patients can recognize and identify celebrities could give doctors a simple way to identify the early signs of dementia in those between the ages of 40 and 65, according to the study, which was conducted by researchers at Northwestern University. Asked to identify 20 celebrities pictured in black-and-white photographs, 27 respondents without early-onset dementia recognize 97 percent of the images and named 93 percent of them, and 30 people with the condition were only able to recognize 79 percent of faces and named fewer than half (46 percent) correctly.

"In addition to its practical value in helping us identify people with early dementia, this test also may help us understand how the brain works to remember and retrieve its knowledge of words and objects," study author Tamar Gefen said.

Eating breakfast makes you healthier

Health experts have long recommended eating a balanced breakfast to provide energy and nutrients to start the day, as well as to maintain a healthy body weight. Now a new study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health suggests that breakfast can actually stave off heart problems. According to the research, which followed nearly 27,000 men ages 45-82 over 16 years, men who skipped breakfast raised their risk of a heart attack or death from coronary heart disease by 27 percent. The link between breakfast and heart disease persisted even when the study controlled for factors such as diet, exercise and smoking. The breakfast-skippers were more likely to feel hungrier later in the day and more at night, leading researchers to theorize that those eating habits caused metabolic changes and a greater incidence of heart disease. A similar study with women is underway.