Source: Prevention.com
About 75% of Americans drink coffee, and many rely on the brew to help them perk up in the morning. But new research has found that feeling alert after having a morning cup of coffee may actually be due to a placebo effect.
The study, which was published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, followed 47 people who drank at least one cup of coffee a day. The researchers asked them to avoid eating or drinking a caffeinated beverage for at least three hours before the study. The participants were interviewed and then given two functional MRI (Magnetic resonance imaging) scans — one that was taken before they had any caffeine or coffee and another 30 minutes after they either took a caffeine supplement or drank a standard cup of coffee.
The authors wrote in the study that they expected that the MRIs after having either a caffeine supplement or coffee would have higher integration of the brain networks that are associated with executive memory function (the prefrontal cortex) and introspection and self-reflection (the default mode network).
But while the MRIs showed that the study participants were more active and alert after having coffee, there weren’t equal levels of alertness in the caffeine and coffee groups. The researchers discovered that people who drank coffee had more connection in the higher visual network (which processes things you see) and the right executive control network (which helps with problem solving)—and that didn’t happen in people who just had caffeine.
“In simple words, the subjects were more ready for action and alert to external stimuli after having coffee,” lead study author Maria Picó-Pérez, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher at Spain’s Jaume I University, said in a statement.
Basically, it wasn’t just the caffeine that made coffee drinkers feel more alert—there was something about actually drinking a cup of coffee that did the trick.
The study didn’t explore the reasons why people who drank coffee vs. just having caffeine were more alert — it simply found a link. But there are a few theories on what could be going on here.
Caffeine is a known stimulant, and a standard 8-ounce cup of coffee contains 80 to 100 milligrams of caffeine, per the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But that extra oomph people get beyond caffeine from drinking coffee may be a placebo effect, says says W. Christopher Winter, M.D., a neurologist and sleep medicine physician with Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine and host of the Sleep Unplugged podcast.
“We often describe time cues in the brain as zeitgebers,” he says. “Morning coffee—the ritual of grinding, pressing, frothing, the visit to the coffee shop, the social interactions, the anticipation—all of these sum to create wakefulness.” There’s also “a fair amount of belief” that drinking coffee helps people wake up — and that can be powerful, he says.