2023-07-01 08:56:00
It may sound like a cliché, but for many, the day doesn’t really begin until they’ve emptied their cup of coffee. The latter is often associated with a boosting effect on alertness, and people swear by it for staying awake and improving productivity. However, our brains may be lying to us regarding the importance of this coffee.
A team of Portuguese scientists has found that the feeling of alertness one gets following drinking a cup of coffee may be more of a placebo effect brought on by the experience of drinking coffee, rather than the effects of caffeine itself. In their study (link below), they describe how they performed MRI scans on people who regularly drank coffee.
According to Nuno Sousa of the University of Minho (Portugal), co-author of the study:
Coffee is generally expected to increase alertness and psychomotor functioning. When you manage to better understand the mechanisms that underlie a biological phenomenon, you open up avenues to explore the factors that can modulate it.
The researchers recruited participants who drank at least one cup of coffee a day. Prior to the study, they were asked to refrain from consuming caffeinated beverages or foods for at least 3 hours. The team first interviewed them to collect socio-demographic data, then performed two MRI scans, one before and one following taking caffeine or drinking a standardized cup of coffee. During the scans, participants were encouraged to relax and let their minds wander.
Given the neurochemical effects of coffee, scientists believed that the scans would reveal increased integration of networks associated with the prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain is involved in executive memory, as well as in default mode network, responsible for introspection. The results showed that the consumption of coffee and pure caffeine led to a decrease in connectivity within the default mode network. This suggests that coffee or caffeine consumption improves individuals’ readiness to transition from a resting state to performing tasks.
In contrast, coffee consumption increased connectivity within the higher visual network and the right executive control network, brain regions related to working memory and cognitive control. This effect was not observed when the participants took only caffeine and did not experience the sensation of enjoying a cup of coffee.
According to María Picó-Pérez, author of the study:
Considering that some of the effects we saw were replicated by caffeine, we would expect other caffeinated beverages to share some of these effects. However, others were specific to coffee consumption, due to factors such as the particular smell and taste of the drink, or psychological expectation.
The authors acknowledged the limitations of their study, mentioning that they did not examine whether non-caffeinated coffee might yield similar results to caffeinated coffee. Additionally, they cautioned that the benefits perceived by coffee drinkers can potentially be attributed to relief from withdrawal symptoms, which were not examined in the study.
The study published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience: Coffee consumption decreases the connectivity of the posterior Default Mode Network (DMN) at rest.
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#effect #morning #coffee #placebo
