Weekly Roundup: Brain Growth And Coffee, Food Craving, And Decision-Making
Recent studies on how caffeine could impact brain plasticity, a region for food cravings under stress, and how to make better decisions.
As usual I am having trouble deciding which studies to include in this weekly roundup for you leading brains subscribers (I should reread the last bit on decision making!). I’ve settled on a few which link to topics I’ve written about recently.
Let’s start with a topic I’ve written on a few times and this one is slightly more negative. I have reported on plenty of research showing the beneficial effects of coffee, or compounds found in coffee - but this is a, now, rare negative reported impact of coffee, or rather caffeine.
Coffee and Brain Plasticity
I like coffee and I like brain plasticity, the ability of the brain to grow and rewire. A recent study found that caffeine drinkers may have impaired brain plasticity! That came as surprise to me after so many positive reports on coffee and caffeine such as a compound in coffee reported as improving cognitive function, coffee potentially helping you to live longer, and one study even showed it could help improve the effectiveness of business teams. So what did this new study find?
This study by Megan Vigne and colleagues of the Neuromodulation Research Facility of Butler Hospital in the US investigated the potential impact of caffeine on brain responses to Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS).
I’ll have to explain this bit well: there are two strands that seem to be linked. The first is that TMS is a way to stimulate or inhibit brain functioning. An electro-magnet is placed on or near the skull and a magnetic field can be targeted at specific brain regions at different intensities.
TMS is used for multiple reasons. One is simply for research - it’s a non-invasive and safe way to activate or temporarily deactivate regions of the brain. Another is for therapeutic purposes, mostly to activate regions of the brain and stimulate their continual activation - this can be used for multiple conditions. It is also used in the consumer space in milder forms - for example with meditation headbands you can buy over the counter. Yup, if you didn’t know, that is all possible now!
Anyway TMS stimulates what are called MEPs (motor-evoked potentials) - that means neuron excitability and this is thought to promote brain plasticity, or growth of connections between brain cells. So what has this got to do with coffee, or more specifically caffeine you may ask?
Well, this is precisely what Vigne et al. investigated, it was the MEP response to Magnetic Stimulation and they found a noticeable difference between those who regularly consumed caffeine and those that didn’t (in all types of drinks).
This would also align with the way that caffeine works. Caffeine acts as what is known as adenosine receptor antagonist in the brain, that’s why it can be stimulant. But that influences synaptic strength (connections between brain cells) and therefore plasticity processes in the brain. This blocking of adenosine receptors is associated with inhibited brain plasticity over time!
Well, my, that does sound like bad news. So is it cause to worry?
Naaa, not at the moment - when I checked, I noticed that this was a small scale study - actually so small I was surprised it even got published. Only 16 caffeine drinkers vs. 4 non-caffeine drinkers were measured. Even by brain study standards that is tiny and can hardly be seen to be predictive (of course the authors also note this).
However, it should open the door to more studies. But with all the good news on coffee, I’m sticking with my coffee drinking habits for now, I say while sipping coffee, without a shred of a bad feeling.
But speaking of good or bad nutrition habits another topic that come across my radar was that of crave, and comfort food, eating which also impacts me at times.
The Brain and Food Cravings
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