Just seeing reminders of coffee can stimulate the brain
March 27, 2019
Science Daily/University of Toronto
Just looking at something that reminds us of coffee can cause our minds to become more alert and attentive, according to a new University of Toronto study.
"Coffee is one of the most popular beverages and a lot is known about its physical effects," said Sam Maglio, an associate professor in the department of management at U of T Scarborough and the Rotman School of Management.
"Much less is known about its psychological meaning -- in other words, how even seeing reminders of it can influence how we think."
The study, co-authored by Maglio and published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, looks at an effect called priming, through which exposure to even subtle cues can influence our thoughts and behaviour.
"People often encounter coffee-related cues, or think about coffee, without actually ingesting it," says Maglio, an expert on consumer behaviour.
"We wanted to see if there was an association between coffee and arousal such that if we simply exposed people to coffee-related cues, their physiological arousal would increase, as it would if they had actually drank coffee."
Arousal in psychology refers to how specific areas of the brain get activated into a state of being alert, awake and attentive. It can be triggered by a number of things, including our emotions, neurotransmitters in the brain, or the caffeinated beverages we consume.
In this case the researchers, including Maglio and Eugene Chan, a former PhD student at Rotman, wanted to explore how simply being exposed to things that remind us of coffee may have an effect on arousal.
Across four separate studies and using a mix of participants from western and eastern cultures, they compared coffee- and tea-related cues. They found that participants exposed to coffee-related cues perceived time as shorter and thought in more concrete, precise terms.
"People who experience physiological arousal -- again, in this case as the result of priming and not drinking coffee itself -- see the world in more specific, detailed terms," says Maglio, whose past research has looked at how uncertainty can affect our perception of time.
"This has a number of implications for how people process information and make judgments and decisions."
However, the effect was not as strong among participants who grew up in eastern cultures. Maglio speculates that the association between coffee and arousal is not as strong in less coffee-dominated cultures.
"In North America we have this image of a prototypical executive rushing off to an important meeting with a triple espresso in their hand. There's this connection between drinking caffeine and arousal that may not exist in other cultures."
Past U of T research has looked at the effect of other primed associations, notes Maglio. One study found that merely looking at a fast food restaurant logo may lessen our ability to slow down and savour pleasurable experiences in life.
Maglio says next steps for the research will look at associations people have for different foods and beverages. Just thinking about energy drinks or red wine, for example, could have very different effects on arousal.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190327164713.htm
The scent of coffee appears to boost performance in math
Smelling a coffee-like scent, which has no caffeine in it, creates an expectation for students that they will perform better on tests
July 17, 2018
Science Daily/Stevens Institute of Technology
Research reveals that the scent of coffee alone may help people perform better on the analytical portion of the Graduate Management Aptitude Test, or GMAT, a computer adaptive test required by many business schools.
Drinking coffee seems to have its perks. In addition to the physical boost it delivers, coffee may lessen our risk of heart disease, diabetes and dementia. Coffee may even help us live longer. Now, there's more good news: research at Stevens Institute of Technology reveals that the scent of coffee alone may help people perform better on the analytical portion of the Graduate Management Aptitude Test, or GMAT, a computer adaptive test required by many business schools.
The work, led by Stevens School of Business professor Adriana Madzharov, not only highlights the hidden force of scent and the cognitive boost it may provide on analytical tasks, but also the expectation that students will perform better on those tasks. Madzharov, with colleagues at Temple University and Baruch College, recently published their findings in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.
"It's not just that the coffee-like scent helped people perform better on analytical tasks, which was already interesting," says Madzharov. "But they also thought they would do better, and we demonstrated that this expectation was at least partly responsible for their improved performance." In short, smelling a coffee-like scent, which has no caffeine in it, has an effect similar to that of drinking coffee, suggesting a placebo effect of coffee scent.
In their work, Madzharov and her team administered a 10-question GMAT algebra test in a computer lab to about 100 undergraduate business students, divided into two groups. One group took the test in the presence of an ambient coffee-like scent, while a control group took the same test -- but in an unscented room. They found that the group in the coffee-smelling room scored significantly higher on the test.
Madzharov and colleagues wanted to know more. Could the first group's boost in quick thinking be explained, in part, by an expectation that a coffee scent would increase alertness and subsequently improve performance?
The team designed a follow-up survey, conducted among more than 200 new participants, quizzing them on beliefs about various scents and their perceived effects on human performance. Participants believed they would feel more alert and energetic in the presence of a coffee scent, versus a flower scent or no scent; and that exposure to coffee scent would increase their performance on mental tasks. The results suggest that expectations about performance can be explained by beliefs that coffee scent alone makes people more alert and energetic.
Madzharov, whose research focuses on sensory marketing and aesthetics, is looking to explore whether coffee-like scents can have a similar placebo effect on other types of performance, such as verbal reasoning. She also says that the finding -- that coffee-like scent acts as a placebo for analytical reasoning performance -- has many practical applications, including several for business.
"Olfaction is one of our most powerful senses," says Madzharov. "Employers, architects, building developers, retail space managers and others, can use subtle scents to help shape employees' or occupants' experience with their environment. It's an area of great interest and potential."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180717125836.htm
Coffee affects cannabis and steroid systems
March 15, 2018
Science Daily/Northwestern University
Coffee affects your metabolism in dozens of other ways besides waking you up, including your metabolism of neurotransmitters typically linked to cannabis, a study reports. The neurotransmitters related to the endocannabinoid system -- the same ones affected by cannabis -- decreased after drinking four to eight cups of coffee in a day. That's the opposite of what occurs after someone uses cannabis. The study also gives possible insight in the cause of munchies. Coffee may also increase the elimination of steroids.
It's well known that a morning cup of joe jolts you awake. But scientists have discovered coffee affects your metabolism in dozens of other ways, including your metabolism of steroids and the neurotransmitters typically linked to cannabis, reports a new study from Northwestern Medicine.
In a study of coffee consumption, Northwestern scientists were surprised to discover coffee changed many more metabolites in the blood than previously known. Metabolites are chemicals in the blood that change after we eat and drink or for a variety of other reasons.
The neurotransmitters related to the endocannabinoid system -- the same ones affected by cannabis -- decreased after drinking four to eight cups of coffee in a day. That's the opposite of what occurs after someone uses cannabis. Neurotransmitters are the chemicals that deliver messages between nerve cells.
Cannabinoids are the chemicals that give the cannabis plant its medical and recreational properties. The body also naturally produces endocannabinoids, which mimic cannabinoid activity.
In addition, certain metabolites related to the androsteroid system increased after drinking four to eight cups of coffee in a day, which suggests coffee might facilitate the excretion or elimination of steroids. Because the steroid pathway is a focus for certain diseases including cancers, coffee may have an effect on these diseases as well.
"These are entirely new pathways by which coffee might affect health," said lead author Marilyn Cornelis, assistant professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "Now we want to delve deeper and study how these changes affect the body."
Little is known about how coffee directly impacts health. In the new study, Northwestern scientists applied advanced technology that enabled them to measure hundreds of metabolites in human blood samples from a coffee trial for the first time. The study generates new hypotheses about coffee's link to health and new directions for coffee research.
The paper will be published March 15 in the Journal of Internal Medicine.
Drinking lots of coffee for science
In the three-month trial based in Finland, 47 people abstained from coffee for one month, consumed four cups a day for the second month and eight cups a day for the third month. Cornelis and colleagues used advanced profiling techniques to examine more than 800 metabolites in the blood collected after each stage of the study.
Blood metabolites of the endocannabinoid system decreased with coffee consumption, particularly with eight cups per day, the study found.
The endocannabinoid metabolic pathway is an important regulator of our stress response, Cornelis said, and some endocannabinoids decrease in the presence of chronic stress.
"The increased coffee consumption over the two-month span of the trial may have created enough stress to trigger a decrease in metabolites in this system," she said. "It could be our bodies' adaptation to try to get stress levels back to equilibrium."
The endocannabinoid system also regulates a wide range of functions: cognition, blood pressure, immunity, addiction, sleep, appetite, energy and glucose metabolism.
"The endocannabinoid pathways might impact eating behaviors," suggested Cornelis, "the classic case being the link between cannabis use and the munchies."
Coffee also has been linked to aiding weight management and reducing risk of type 2 diabetes.
"This is often thought to be due to caffeine's ability to boost fat metabolism or the glucose-regulating effects of polyphenols (plant-derived chemicals)," Cornelis said. "Our new findings linking coffee to endocannabinoids offer alternative explanations worthy of further study."
It's not known if caffeine or other substances in coffee trigger the change in metabolites.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180315091253.htm
Higher coffee consumption associated with lower risk of early death
August 27, 2017
Science Daily/European Society of Cardiology
Higher coffee consumption is associated with a lower risk of early death, according to new research. The observational study in nearly 20 000 participants suggests that coffee can be part of a healthy diet in healthy people.
"Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages around the world," said Dr Adela Navarro, a cardiologist at Hospital de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain. "Previous studies have suggested that drinking coffee might be inversely associated with all-cause mortality but this has not been investigated in a Mediterranean country."
The purpose of this study was to examine the association between coffee consumption and the risk of mortality in a middle-aged Mediterranean cohort. The study was conducted within the framework of the Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra (SUN) Project, a long-term prospective cohort study in more than 22 500 Spanish university graduates which started in 1999.
This analysis included 19,896 participants of the SUN Project, whose average age at enrollment was 37.7 years old. On entering the study, participants completed a previously validated semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire to collect information on coffee consumption, lifestyle and sociodemographic characteristics, anthropometric measurements, and previous health conditions.
Patients were followed-up for an average of ten years. Information on mortality was obtained from study participants and their families, postal authorities, and the National Death Index. Cox regression models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for incident mortality according to baseline total coffee consumption adjusted for potential confounders.
During the ten year period, 337 participants died. The researchers found that participants who consumed at least four cups of coffee per day had a 64% lower risk of all-cause mortality than those who never or almost never consumed coffee (adjusted HR, 0.36; 95% CI, 0.19-0.70). There was a 22% lower risk of all-cause mortality for each two additional cups of coffee per day (adjusted HR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.66-0.92).
The researchers examined whether sex, age or adherence to the Mediterranean diet had any influence on the association between baseline coffee consumption and mortality. They observed a significant interaction between coffee consumption and age (p for interaction=0.0016). In those who were at least 45 years old, drinking two additional cups of coffee per day was associated with a 30% lower risk of mortality during follow-up (adjusted HR, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.58-0.85). The association was not significant among younger participants.
Dr Navarro said: "In the SUN project we found an inverse association between drinking coffee and the risk of all-cause mortality, particularly in people aged 45 years and above. This may be due to a stronger protective association among older participants."
She concluded: "Our findings suggest that drinking four cups of coffee each day can be part of a healthy diet in healthy people."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170827101750.htm