If you’re a coffee lover, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re already on your second cup of the day while reading this. Your friends might think you’re a little too reliant on your cups of the good stuff, but as it turns out, coffee really does have special powers.
The energy boosts people feel when drinking a cup of coffee can not be recreated with plain caffeine, according to a new study that has highlighted the other areas of the brain that are activated specifically by coffee.
Several studies have highlighted that drinking coffee makes people feel more alert but researchers wanted to find out if the alertness effect of coffee is solely dependent on caffeine or if other factors are involved.
According to the study published in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, although caffeine managed to boost areas of the brain to make someone feel more awake, coffee added other effects on brain areas that influence working memory and goal-directed behaviour.
“There is a common expectation that coffee increases alertness and psychomotor functioning. When you get to understand better the mechanisms underlying a biological phenomenon, you open pathways for exploring the factors that may modulate it and even the potential benefits of that mechanism,” study co-author Nuno Sousa said.
People involved in the study who drank a minimum of one cup of coffee a day were asked to abstain from eating or drinking caffeinated drinks for no less than three hours before the study.
The social and demographic data of the participants were then gathered and they went through two quick MRI brain scans – one before and one 30 minutes after drinking caffeine or one cup of coffee. The participants were told to be calm and let their minds roam freely during the scans.
The results found that drinking both coffee and caffeine led to reduced nerve connectivity in the brain’s default mode network, the part of the brain in control of introspection and the self-reflection processes.
Researchers explained that this slight change could show that people are more inclined to move from a restful to a productive state.
But, the researchers shared that drinking coffee could be more beneficial in expanding the connectivity in the brain’s more modern nerve networking – controlling vision and other parts that are active in working memory, cognitive control, and goal-directed behaviour.
These effects were not found in those who took caffeine. Essentially, the researchers explain that if someone wants to not feel alert but feel a boost of energy, you might need more than caffeine.
The new findings also highlight that there may be some special advantages when drinking coffee. This may be down to factors such as the specific smell and taste of coffee or the psychological expectation linked with drinking a cup of coffee.
Even though the study found that drinking caffeine might not be enough alone, other experts argue that it does still have effects that can be useful.
TikTok user Leonomics Coffee explains that caffeine can actually help improve our memory. “Caffeine works by increasing the activity of another neurotransmitter called acetylcholine and the one is important for memory and learning,” the expert explains.
He continues: “So drinking caffeine actually helps creating new memories as well as recalling information that has already been stored in our brains.”