Caffeine can compromise working memory function and brain activity patterns | Hacker News Reader

Caffeine can compromise working memory function and brain activity patterns

psypost.org

29 pointsTerretta10 comments

"Lastly, it is of importance to be aware that the observed effects in the current study were yielded from pure caffeine administration. The common caffeinated dietary, e.g., coffee or tea, contains several other biocompounds (such as chlorogenic acid, caffeic acid, trigonelline, kahweol, and cafestol83) which may provide other neuroprotective effects. Thus, one should not exclude a potential beneficial effect which caffeinated dietary may bring."

source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-26808-5

Energy drinks, while they have their own additives, I don't think they are the ones listed here as being possibly neuroprotective.

Study sample size 20 with questionable methodology and sourced from nature.com which currently has their standards in free fall.

This kind of comment is not helpful, nor curious, simply reductive. Many studies are fine with small sample sizes, which I can expand on if you'd like. As someone several years removed from academic literature, before I believe a curt dismissal of a neuroscience finding I would hope to read some characterization of both "falling standards" and which particular methodology is questionable. There's a lot of literature already summarizing the various flavors of failstates, even saying "resembles p-hacking" makes a more informative comment.

That’s a lot of caffeine - doesn’t really change the study but also makes it hard infer anything about 1 cup a day. It’s like 4-5 decent sized cups of coffee worth.

Actually it’s also beyond what the fda recommends. “ For healthy adults, the FDA has cited 400 milligrams a day—that's about four or five cups of coffee—as an amount not generally associated with dangerous, negative effects”

But going to a bit of an extreme makes sense for an early study. If they didn’t see anything with the high caffeine intake, then a low intake would be definitely no noticeable effect. With some effect seen at high doses, now further study should be done.

“ 20 young healthy non-smokers (age: 26.4 ± 4.0 years; body mass index: 22.7 ± 1.4 kg/m2; and habitual caffeine intake: 474.1 ± 107.5 mg/day) in a 10-day caffeine (150 mg × 3 times/day), a 10-day placebo (3 times/day), and a withdrawal condition (9-day caffeine followed by 1-day placebo)”

That’s a lot of caffeine, and from my own experiences with caffeine use and withdrawal, I question how much of the negative results are related to sleep patterns caused by intake and withdrawal.

I also question the methodology of only re-testing on the tenth day, I’d think testing every day would lead to better results and the study would be able to show a gradual decrease in cognitive performance.

Very curious about the long term implications. I drink a lot of coffee to keep up with work and powerlifting. I’ve started cutting back because of said sleep pattern issues.

Weed also does the same thing and I smoke that and drink coffee. I must be some sort of zombie at this point.

That's okay, I'll still keep drinking that garbage.

It's the socially acceptable addiction.

The struggle is real

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