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Expertise
Coffee and the mind
January 2009
But what does science have to say regarding coffee’s mental benefits? Plenty, actually, and nearly all of the studies on coffee drinking echo one thing: coffee makes your mind work better.
Coffee and mental alertness
Consider these studies conducted in different countries to test coffee’s effect on mental alertness.
Through a series of tests, researchers at the University of Wales in the United Kingdom examined the effects of breakfast and coffee on mental alertness in the late morning and after lunch. The patients were tested at 7:45 am and then given breakfast and coffee. An additional cup of coffee was given at 11:15 am. The patients were then tested again both before and after lunch.
The study found that the coffee increased the patients’ mental alertness and ability to perform a task over a prolonged period of time. In addition, drinking coffee also helped improved their mood and overall feeling of well-being.
A study performed at The Netherlands' University of Amsterdam looked at how moderate amounts of coffee affected brain function and overall mental awareness. The results proved that coffee did improve brain function, without adversely affecting unrelated parts of the brain and the patients’ health.
People who need to keep awake through longer periods, such as students studying for exams and employees working overtime, often drink coffee to stay mentally active. To scientifically test coffee’s effectiveness during such times, the Division of Sleep Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital together with the Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts conducted a study where the patient was kept awake for long periods of time. They were kept awake for over 42 hours at a time, and then allowed to sleep as necessary, over 29 days. The patients studied were healthy men between 18 and 30 years of age with no sleeping issues.
The researchers found that coffee did cause a marked difference in the mental alertness of the patients during their waking periods. In addition, the patients were able to stay completely awake for longer periods of time. The study suggested that taking a decent amount of coffee over a prolonged period of time was indeed helpful in increasing mental alertness when one needs to be awake for a considerable amount of time.
Aside from keeping one mentally alert, other studies have shown that your memory also benefits from drinking your coffee.
Coffee’s effect on memory
Researchers led by Florian Koppelstätter, M.D., Ph.D., a radiologist at the Medical University Innsbruck in Austria, have demonstrated that coffee modulates short-term working memory, according to their study published in 2005. Short-term memory serves as a temporary storage of information in the brain, and is required to remember things for a short period of time, like repeating a phone number to yourself before you can dial it on the phone.
The Austrian researchers used brain scans to determine the effects of coffee consumption on brain activation in parts involving short-term memory of 15 healthy adult volunteers during a working memory task.
Volunteers who drank the equivalent of two cups of coffee demonstrated a tendency towards improved short-term memory skills and reaction times during the task. The brain scans revealed increased activity in brain regions located in the frontal lobe, where a part of the working memory network is located, and the anterior cingulum, the part of the brain that controls attention. In contrast, volunteers who took the placebo showed no change in activation patterns from the earlier test.
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Drinking coffee also benefits your memory in the long-run. In a French study covering over 7,000 men and women living in France, women who drank three or more cups of coffee daily were 30 percent less likely to have memory problems at age 65 than women who drank a single cup of coffee or less.
That study further revealed that the benefit of drinking coffee increased with age. Memory decline was 70 percent less likely among women over 80 who drank three cups or more daily than it was among those who drank one cup or less. Drinking tea produces the same effect, but according to the study you would have to drink about two cups of tea for every one of coffee.
All in all, these studies have only confirmed the long-held belief that whenever you need a quick fix to jumpstart your mind, you know what to drink. |
