His understanding of the agony and the ecstasy of manic depression displays a level of empathy for the illness never yet found in a novel, a function perhaps of his friendship with fellow-author David Foster Wallace, a real-life depressive who committed suicide in 2008.

ECONOMIST: A new take on Jane Austen

To be precise, the author, Franz Messerli, was wondering if chocolate consumption might be correlated with the overall cognitive function of a population.

FORBES: Chocolate Makes Us Smarter. Or Does It?

The next step is to figure out if stimulation also can help when recalling old memories, because that function can also be impaired with dementia, according to Nanthia Suthana, the first author on the study and a UCLA postdoctoral researcher.

WSJ: Memory Gets Jolt in Brain Research