Coming as no surprise to regular imbibers, a new study says drinking coffee appears to enhance concentration and improve motor control and alertness by creating changes in the brain. The study also found coffee drinkers had increased activity in parts of the brain consistent with an improved ability to focus and react to a stimulus.
"For the general public, the take-home message is that we now know better how the regular intake of coffee prepares your brain for action and prompt response," said senior author Dr. Nuno Sousa, professor at the University of Minho in Portugal, in a report from Medscape. The journal Molecular Psychiatry recently published the study which was sponsored by the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC).
Dr Nuno also noted that, “this is the first time that the effect of regular coffee drinking on the brain’s network has been studied in this level of detail.”
Coffee’s "Signature"
Coffee holds "particular interest for human health, in view of its short-term effects on attention, sleep, and memory and its long-term impact on the appearance of different disease and on healthy span of aging," the authors write. However, despite its "widespread use," little research has focused on the "effects of its chronic consumption on the brain's intrinsic functional networks."
Rather, he noted, the investigators' motivation was to investigate the impact of regular coffee intake on brain connectivity, sometimes described as the "signature" of regular coffee drinking.
For the study, coffee drinkers were defined as those who drank more than one cup of coffee a day. (Moderate coffee consumption can be defined as 3–5 cups per day, based on the European Food Safety Authority’s review of caffeine safety.)
Researchers said they found a link between drinking coffee and a decreased degree of connectivity in the right precuneus and right insular areas of the brain, which suggests improved motor control and higher levels of alertness.
“The structural and connectivity differences observed among regular coffee drinkers in this research also occurred in non-coffee drinkers soon after they consumed a cup of coffee,” ISIC pointed out in an online article. “This therefore indicates that coffee can impose these changes in a short time period, and that these effects are triggered by coffee.”
Double-Edged Sword
Commenting on the study for Medscape, Dr. J. W. Langer, a lecturer in medical pharmacology at University of Copenhagen in Denmark, who was not involved in the study, said it "also shows a possible link between habitual coffee consumption and higher stress and anxiety levels.” Although this is "only an association and not a causal finding, it reminds us that coffee can be a double-edged sword.”