Bacopa monnieri (L.) Pennell - syn.Gratiola monnieria L.; Lysimachia monnieri L. - Plantaginaceae
brahmi, bacopa, water hyssop, herb of grace, Kleines Fettblatt

Succuleent creeping herb, native to India and Southeast Asia; leaves sessile, entire, oblong-oblanceolate; flowers axillary, white, blue, or purple; fruit a narrowly ovoid capsule; seeds yellow-brown.
http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=2&taxon_id=200020622

„Bacopa has been used in traditional Ayurvedic treatment for epilepsy and asthma.“
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacopa_monnieri

The putative bioactive component, Bacoside A, was found to be a mixture of saponins with bacoside A3 (0.1-0.8%), bacopaside II (0.1-0-6%), jujubogenin isomer of bacopasaponin C (0.05-0.7%) and bacopasaponin C (0.05-0.4%) as major constituents. Two common flavonoids, luteolin and apigenin, were also present in all samples.
[Quantitative determination of the major saponin mixture bacoside A in Bacopa monnieri by HPLC., Deepak, M., Sangli, G.K., Arun, P.C., Amit, A., Phytochemical Analysis, Vol.16(1), 2005, 24-29]

„Several Bacopa samples (plant materials, extracts and commercial formulations) were successfully analyzed. Major bacopasaponins were bacosides A3 (3), bacopaside II (4), bacopaside I (5), bacopaside X (6), bacopasaponin C (7), bacopaside N2 (9) and the minor components were bacopasaponin F (1), bacopasaponin E (2), bacopaside N1 (8) bacopaside III (10), bacopaside IV (11) and bacopaside V (12). The total saponin content in the samples, plant materials and extracts varied from 5.1 to 22.17% and 1.47 to 66.03 mg/capsule or tablet in the commercial formulations.“
[Estimation of twelve bacopa saponins in Bacopa monnieri extracts and formulations by high-performance liquid chromatography., Murthy, P.B.S., Raju, V.R., Ramakrisana, T., Chakravarthy, M.S., Kumar, K.V., Kannababu, S., Subbaraju, G.V., Chemical and pharmaceutical bulletin, Vol.54(6), 2006, 907-911]

„There is some evidence to suggest that Bacopa improves memory free recall with evidence for enhancement in other cognitive abilities currently lacking perhaps due to inconsistent measures employed by studies across these cognitive domains.“
[The cognitive-enhancing effects of Bacopa monnieri: a systematic review of randomized, controlled human clinical trials., Pase, M.P., Kean, J., Sarris, J., Neale, C., Scholey, A.B., Stough, C., The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 18(7), 2012, 647-652]

„A search strategy was implemented to capture clinical studies into the neurocognitive effects of modafinil, Ginseng and Bacopa. Studies undertaken on healthy human subjects using a double-blind, placebo-controlled design were included. For each study where appropriate data were included, effect sizes (Cohen's d) were calculated for measures showing significant positive and negative effects of treatment over placebo. The highest effect sizes for cognitive outcomes were 0.77 for modafinil (visuospatial memory accuracy), 0.86 for Ginseng (simple reaction time) and 0.95 for Bacopa (delayed word recall). These data confirm that neurocognitive enhancement from well characterized nutraceuticals can produce cognition enhancing effects of similar magnitude to those from pharmaceutical interventions.“
[Cognitive effects of two nutraceuticals Ginseng and Bacopa benchmarked against modafinil: a review and comparison of effect sizes., Neale, C., Camfield, D., Reay, J., Stough, C., Scholey, A., British journal of clinical pharmacology, 75(3), 2013, 728-737] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bcp.12002/full

Using oxygen- and glucose-deprivation (OGD)-induced hippocampal cell damage as an in vitro model of ischemia, bacopaside I (25 μM) exhibited potent neuroprotective effects against OGD-induced neuronal cell damage. „OGD caused necrosis and apoptosis and… bacopaside I attenuated the effects of OGD. The neuroprotective effects of bacopaside I were blocked by the PKC inhibitor Ro-31-8220 and PI3K inhibitor LY294002, but not by the ERK inhibitor U0126.“
[Protective effects of Bacopa monnieri on ischemia-induced cognitive deficits in mice: The possible contribution of bacopaside I and underlying mechanism., Le, X. T., Pham, H. T. N., Van Nguyen, T., Nguyen, K. M., Tanaka, K., Fujiwara, H., Matsumoto, K., Journal of ethnopharmacology, Vol.164, 2015, 37-45]

Roxburgh, W., Plants of the coast of Coromandel, vol.2, t.178 (1798) [n.a.]
http://plantgenera.org/species.php?id_species=124153