Experiment Shows Caffeine Boosts Long Term Memory

An anonymous reader writes "A team of researchers at Johns Hopkins has published results demonstrating that caffeine seems to boost long-term memory. In a double-blind study, participants were shown a series of images soon after taking either a caffeine pill or a placebo; 24 hours later they were tested on a similar, but not identical, series of images. Those who took the caffeine pill were more likely to correctly classify images as being different, identical, or similar to those seen the previous day; researchers refer to this as a 'pattern separation' test. The beneficial effect of caffeine on the long-term memory of honey bees was covered by Slashdot earlier."

Comments

do be a do bee

[turkeydance]

so *that's* the secret.

Re:do be a do bee

[Sponge Bath]

In other news, caffeinated bees boost long term cardio health for humans running in fear.

Re:do be a do bee

[fluffythdestroy]

Wasn't that Honey Whisky. A bee's going through a wood beam like it was nothing would pretty make me run in fear

Re:do be a do bee

[Joce640k]

This suffers from the usual "caffeine" bias in that it only works if you're not a regular coffee drinker.

Coffee/caffeine does nothing if you're a regular drinker

(except bring you back up to what the rest of the world considers "normal" - caffeine withdrawal is another subject).

Re:do be a do bee

[Anonymous Coward]

back up to what the rest of the world considers "normal"

"Caffeine is the most widely used psychoactive substance in the world. In Western society, at least 80 per cent of the adult population consumes caffeine in amounts large enough to have an effect on the brain." -abstract Caffeine consumption is normal.

Re:do be a do bee

[Sockatume]

That's a popular little trivia fact that unfortunately isn't supported by the evidence. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691502000960

Real article behind paywall

[evilRhino]

So the article costs $32 to read. It begs the question, what are they hiding?

Re:Real article behind paywall

[Lazere]

I'm not seeing a paywall. Perhaps you haven't had your caffeine yet?

Re:Real article behind paywall

[oodaloop]

The fantastic article links to the orginal paper. Maybe you should get another cup yourself.

Re:Real article behind paywall

[Anonymous Coward]

So the article costs $32 to read. It begs the question, what are they hiding?

Most likely nothing. Yes, they could have submitted it to an open-access journal, but when you've a shot at getting something into Nature Neuroscience then most authors will go for it because, bottom line and right or wrong, it's what Universities and Institutions often look at when deciding who to hire and who to fire.

Besides, if you wanted to hide something why would you hide it behind a paywall which a large proprotion of research insititutes probably have access to? You're basically advertising your secrets to anyone who is knowledgeable in the field and has a research job.

Re:Real article behind paywall

[oodaloop]

I'll take it with cream and sugar, thanks for asking.

Re:Real article behind paywall

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not hiding anything. They're paying for professional editors, typesetters, etc. in order to improve the quality and fix errors. The article published in Nature (and many other high ranking journals) is significantly improved from the one the authors originally submitted.

Re:Real article behind paywall

[Anonymous Coward]

This is simply false. Apparently you've never published in a top Journal before. Please stop spreading your misinformation. Every paper in top journals goes through significant editing by the publishing staff. Just because you've never met these people doesn't mean we don't exist. Stop trying to marginalize people.

Re:Real article behind paywall

[evilRhino]

There's actually no transparency to what the costs of publication actually are. I've accumulated some anecdotal evidence that many peer-reviewers are often volunteers that work for free. I have no doubt that the majority of the cost of this publication is absorbed by the PI and his institution.

Re:Real article behind paywall

[jeffb (2.718)]

Believe me, I appreciate the efforts of professional editors, and I wish they weren't suffering such collateral damage from disintermediation. I greatly prefer reading professionally-edited material instead of the stuff 90% of scientists (and everyone else) write when left to their own devices.

However, I don't think that it raises the scientific value of journal articles enough to justify today's pricing trends -- and, more to the point, the information-blocking publishers do in an attempt to enforce those prices. I also don't think all the gamesmanship of breaking things into least-publishable-units, optimizing submission patterns by impact factor, and so forth serves the cause of science.

I value editors a lot. I think part of your marginalization arises from your employers' efforts to cling to outdated publishing models. I wish I had a solution.

Re:Real article behind paywall

[Anonymous Coward]

It raises the question, not begs.

Re:Real article behind paywall

[TheTurtlesMoves]

No it doesn't. I have had things published in these journals. We do most of the work, the rest is reviews and editors give a few comments etc. There is very little editing anymore these days.

Re:Real article behind paywall

[ClickOnThis]

So the article costs $32 to read. It begs the question, what are they hiding?

They're not hiding anything. They're just hoping non-coffee-drinkers forget they read the article, and purchase it several times over.

"I WILL have a third cup!"

[rmdingler]

It is always welcome news when something you already engage in is reported to have benefits.

Like the health benefits of a couple of alcoholic drinks, there will undoubtedly follow a recommended modest dose, beyond which the diminishing returns corollary overtakes any health benefits.

Re:"I WILL have a third cup!"

[Kongming]

Certainly; with a high enough dose, the subject would die.

That aside, the finding is interesting. Based on the summary, I thought that it might just be helping the subjects get closer to the ideal level of psychological arousal for what is probably a simple, routine, and possibly slightly boring task. However, the article states that the subjects were given the pills after having been shown the images, not before, in order to control for that possibility.

There is still one alternative explanation that I can see to a direct chemical effect of caffeine. For the subjects given caffeine after doing the first task in the experimental setting, an association was formed between the setting and getting caffeine. When the subjects returned to do a similar task in the experimental setting again, they received a slight boost in psychological arousal in anticipation of receiving the caffeine. (This kind of effect is commonly seen with many drugs, although I don't know if 200mg of caffeine would induce the effect with a single exposure.) The increased arousal during the follow-up task could explain the increased performance. If they wanted to control for it, one way would be to administer the follow-up task in a different environment than the one in which they did the first task, thereby reducing the impact of any associations with the original setting.

Re:"I WILL have a third cup!"

[aviators99]

"That's funny: rmdingler never has a third cup of coffee at home."

Re:"I WILL have a third cup!"

[interkin3tic]

Also keep in mind that as a nearly universal rule, nothing has completely good effects, and many effects on the brain are subtle. It's unlikely that there aren't long term effects of caffeine that you wouldn't like. Unknown long term negative effects aren't a reason anyone should stop drinking coffee of course, just saying lets not be shocked if researchers find out it, say, decreases your IQ in your senior years or something. It appears to DECREASE your chances of getting alzheimers, which is good, but it's clearly having some permanent effects on the brain. It can't be all beneficial.

Re:"I WILL have a third cup!"

[hawkinspeter]

I don't know how I remembered your Folger's reference as I don't think they showed it in the UK when I was a kid in the 70s. Must be the blood content in my caffeine stream.

Re:"I WILL have a third cup!"

[aviators99]

Perhaps you remembered because they spoofed the commercial in the (epic) movie "Airplane!"

Re:"I WILL have a third cup!"

[hawkinspeter]

If there are significant negative effects of drinking coffee then I'd have thought we'd have found out about it by now. Coffee's been around for several hundred years so typical consumption most likely doesn't have bad effects that are easily noticeable.

Re:"I WILL have a third cup!"

[hawkinspeter]

Ahh - that'd be it. Thanks.

Re:"I WILL have a third cup!"

[hawkinspeter]

If you go back a few hundred years, that'd be easy enough to find. Just a case of trawling through old birth/death rates to see if there's any correlation between when coffee was introduced to a village/society and their longevity.

Re:"I WILL have a third cup!"

[interkin3tic]

If there are significant negative effects of drinking coffee then I'd have thought we'd have found out about it by now.

Look at the current study: here's a positive effect of drinking coffee that we didn't know about. What makes negative effects more obvious than positive effects? Negative effects can be subtle and hard to detect, especially given how noisy data from humans is, and especially when talking about long-term effects.

Look at how long it took for us to realize that tobacco was bad for you overall. People had been smoking that for centuries, yet it's only been in the last few decades that the link to cancer has been really known, and that's a huge increase in the chances of emphysema, lung cancer, and high blood pressure.

Re:"I WILL have a third cup!"

[hawkinspeter]

Yes, smaller effects can easily be overlooked. Tobacco hasn't been in major use (excepting occasional ceremonial use by native americans) for as long as coffee, yet it was suspected of being dangerous by the early 19th century. Major usage of tobacco didn't really take off until the late 19th century when the cigarette machinery was developed.

Negative effects tend to be more noticeable than positive effects as they take effect quicker. If people are dying 10 years before they should be, you're going to spot that before the people living for 10 years longer. Also, human psychology tends to inflate negative effects (although marketeers will tend to inflate positive effects).

Re:"I WILL have a third cup!"

[rogoshen1]

sure. step 1: find a devout mormon or seventh day adventist. (there is no step 2)

Coffeine

[war4peace]

As a heavy caffeine user, I confirm that... hmm... erm... what was I saying?

Re:Coffeine

[daem0n1x]

You shouldn't season you coffee with pot.

Re:Coffeine

[Thanshin]

I don't think your message will be endorsed by the ASEV (American Society for Enology and Viticulture).

Re:Coffeine

[ericloewe]

What an enlightened comment.

Re:Coffeine

[Karl Cocknozzle]

As a heavy caffeine user, I confirm that... hmm... erm... what was I saying?

Also, is the memory improvement from coffee powerful enough to overcome the damage done by all the weed I smoke?

Re:Coffeine

[Anonymous Coward]

you should not introduce into your body anything that ends in "ine"

I guess that depends:
- guillotine <~~ bad
- gasoline <~~ bad
- Listerine <~~ Oh, sorry
- Dateline <~~ bad
- Trampoline <~~ Fun!

For more 'ends in "ine"' options just look here

Re:Coffeine

[hawkinspeter]

You left out the obvious "wine".

Re:Coffeine

[phoenix_rizzen]

Come back tomorrow and you'll remember!

Re:Coffeine

[lxs]

Thanks. I was about to swallow a landmine.

Re:Coffeine

[war4peace]

When?

Re:Coffeine

[TangoMargarine]

vaccine

The Secret

[h00manist]

so *that's* the secret.

Yup, that's the secret. Feed coffee to your computer and you won't need backups any more.

24 hours is long term?

[rodrigoandrade]

What, we're hiring scientists with severe ADHD now???

Re:24 hours is long term?

[Sockatume]

Yes, the long-term memory system is used for everything older than a few minutes. They're different functional units of the brain. Maybe if you had a longer attention span you could've looked up what "long-term memory" means and figured that out for yourself? Maybe learned something?

Re:24 hours is long term?

[rodrigoandrade]

What are you talking about again?

Re:24 hours is long term?

[Sockatume]

I misread the tone of your post, I assumed it was one of those "I can't believe that 24 hours is considered a long time in today's society" remarks and not a joke.

Re:24 hours is long term?

[paxcoder]

I don't understand this joke.

Raktajino

[Anonymous Coward]

Raktajino helps me remember Trek trivia.

Re:Raktajino

[Anonymous Coward]

Pfft, raktajino is a p'tahk drink. Prune Juice! Now *that's* the drink of a warrior.

The detrimental effects for sleep thwart it for me

[jones_supa]

Cool story bro. However I have completely stopped consuming caffeine. I have noticed that even a cup or two of coffee rather early at day, do have some effect on my sleep. Maybe I have become somehow super sensitive to the effects of caffeine (I do not feel much buzz anymore though). But then again, when you look at the half-life of caffeine, it is something like 5+ hours depending on the person. This would suggest that it takes over a whole day for the caffeine to completely be metabolized, no matter what.

Scientific Proof

[cloud.pt]

We are the biped evolution of bees. It's a fact now

Re:Scientific Proof

[Anonymous Coward]

We are the biped evolution of bees. It's a fact now

Buzz off with your crazy theories!

Re:The detrimental effects for sleep thwart it for

[i kan reed]

Considering the demographics on slashdot, I'm going to take a shot in the dark: caffeine and other stimulants have been noted to have uncommon side-effects in ADHD diagnosed population. Could that be you?

just don't drink too much

[alen]

i've found that if i drink the supersize starbucks coffees its the opposite effect. the small size coffees are just right

Re:unable to rermember genuine history events

[Anonymous Coward]

our hardwired religious abuse fairytail history & heritage will have to do?

Ever notice the similarities between evangelical Christians and evangelical athiests? Neither drawer's knives are very sharp (and as Pratchett says, they may even be spoons).

Memorizing vs Recollection

[baffled]

The experiment used caffeine during memorization. Does caffeine have any relative effect on recollection?

Re:Memorizing vs Recollection

[TAiNiUM]

No, it does not help recollection. It helps to form and store the information.

ie, drink cafeine when you study to store the information. Drinking caffeine during the test won't increase recollection though it will help focus.

Re:Memorizing vs Recollection

[TAiNiUM]

Forgot the link:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24855-drink-two-espressos-to-enhance-longterm-memory.html

Re:The detrimental effects for sleep thwart it for

[cold fjord]

I assume that means that you've cut out caffeine from other sources as well? (Soft drinks, teas, various foods.)

I know someone that can't drink a Coke after 4-5:00 PM or he has trouble getting to sleep.

Not surprised

[Kjella]

To me caffeine feels like the brain running on overclock, sure it's faster and better at almost anything but afterwards you're dog tired and overall you get less done in total. Still good for the times when performance right now is what matters, for example we used to have these marathon exams of up to 6 hours. Three hours in and head is getting heavy, take a Red Bull and you're good for another three hours. It'd always be a short evening but totally worth it. Same if the party is now, stay awake here and now and catch up on sleep tomorrow.

Re:Not surprised

[Sockatume]

I find low and regular doses of caffeine to be much more effective than single, high doses. I have a half-litre thermos full of filter coffee which gives me about 50mg of caffeine four times a day. (And because I don't crash or get insomnia, I'm not going out and buying a second or third Red Bull to keep me going.) There seems to be good evidence that low doses of caffeine are effective as performance enhancers, without having particularly serious side-effects. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691502000960

Parts of the brain

[tomhath]

The memory center in the human brain is the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped area in the medial temporal lobe of the brain.

Then why don't they call it the seahorsecampus? These guys make everything so difficult.

Re:Parts of the brain

[rollingcalf]

>Then why don't they call it the seahorsecampus? These guys make everything so difficult.

Hippocampus is derived from the Greek words hippos (horse) and kampos (sea monster).

Re:Parts of the brain

[TeknoHog]

I used to think there is some connection between "campus" as a place of learning and the human memory managemet unit, but I'm not so sure any more...

My wife proposes the theory that it ...

[PseudoCoder]

destroyed my short term memory. I can't even remember where I put my cup.

Re:My wife proposes the theory that it ...

[Hatta]

I'm going to guess it's between 30 and 36 inches away from you, between 15 and 75 degrees from straight ahead. Clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on your handedness.

Re:My wife proposes the theory that it ...

[mcgrew]

I can't even remember where I put my cup.

That's because you're married, and since you know for certain that she's going to move the damned thing there's no point in making the effort to remember.

How about caffeine & sleep depravation?

[oneiros27]

For example, does the caffeine whole trying to do last-minute cramming for finals overcome losing so much sleep for so many hours?

And are there implications for PTSD? (if remember things better, could that increase the chances of PTSD?)

Same old...

[ccanucs]

Coffee's bad for you ....

Coffee's good for you ....

Coffee's bad for you ....

Coffee's good for you ....

Same old.... (as far as I recall :-) )

Re:Same old...

[Jmc23]

Vividly remembering a tragic incident isn't always a good thing.

Good and bad has everything to do with what pathways are being activated, for how long, and what the side effects are. Good and bad should not be judged simply on the final result.

Re:Same old...

[ccanucs]

Uh.....

Huh?

I was merely commenting on the fact that the common fad is to say "this is bad for you" then - a few weeks later - "this is good for you".

You were overthinking what I wrote :-)

Re:The detrimental effects for sleep thwart it for

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as how I was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid, I can certainly say that Caffeine and many other stimulants tend to work bass-ackwards on me by putting me to sleep.

For those interested, look up how/what Ritalin is and what it was approved for, which isn't ADHD

Re:The detrimental effects for sleep thwart it for

[jones_supa]

I assume that means that you've cut out caffeine from other sources as well? (Soft drinks, teas, various foods.)

Sure.

Memorization, or attention to detail?

[LeDopore]

I have a PhD in sensory neuroscience from UC Berkeley. It could be the effect mentioned in TFA is sensory, not memorization.

Caffeine is known to increase acetylcholine release. Acetylcholine makes your brain pay more attention to here-and-now details than to its internal model of what's going on.

I'm also dubious about the idea that any one, simple chemical can ever make you smarter in any general way without adverse consequences. Evolution has a lot of time to scope out all simple neurochemical effects, so beware studies that suggest they've found a "smart pill". Sure, it's possible to take a drug to make you better at one specific task to the detriment of some others, but the idea that there is any simple cognitive enhancing substance would imply either "evolution couldn't mimic the effect of this substance on the brain" or "cognitive enhancement isn't an evolutionary good move". Neither seems very likely.

Re:Memorization, or attention to detail?

[jeffb (2.718)]

Evolution has a lot of time to scope out all simple neurochemical effects, so beware studies that suggest they've found a "smart pill". Sure, it's possible to take a drug to make you better at one specific task to the detriment of some others, but the idea that there is any simple cognitive enhancing substance would imply either "evolution couldn't mimic the effect of this substance on the brain" or "cognitive enhancement isn't an evolutionary good move". Neither seems very likely.

I'm not seeing the evidence for strong forces selecting for better cognitive performance. It seems like there are a lot of evolutionary niches where brain-power loses out to other specializations.

Suppose there's a substance that improves overall cognitive processing, but at a metabolic cost that requires 30% more caloric intake? Or suppose it interferes with efficient storage of fat? Either of those would be a deleterious trait in pre-modern populations.

Suppose it improves cognitive processing, but reduces fertility by 50%? Again, it would be bred out rapidly.

Many of the constraints that guided our evolutionary history no longer apply. I don't expect a miracle pill, either, but saying "if cognitive enhancers existed we'd already have evolved to produce them" seems kind of disingenuous.

Re:Memorization, or attention to detail?

[Kielistic]

Using more energy and producing more heat could both be side effects that are evolutionarily disadvantageous but are not much of a problem in modern society.

Re:Memorization, or attention to detail?

[ninjabus]

I wouldn't be too surprised. Evolution as a tuning process is very effective, but it has issues about getting stuck in just-effective-enough configurations. We evolved to be fairly intelligent, but the body is clearly programmed for using less food energy than is currently available in modern times. There has been some speculative research linking the domestication of fire to increased brain mass. This isn't because larger brains meant we were smart enough to figure out fire, but instead because fire allowed us to digest more foods efficiently, increasing the nutrients our brains could use. Modern agriculture is another jump in nutritional availability, but our bodies haven't adapted to this yet. There could potentially be an extremely effective but inefficient neurochecmical pathway which evolution discarded because conserving energy was the strongest selective pressure, and the alternatives were simply good enough.

Re:Memorization, or attention to detail?

[lpevey]

I'm also dubious about the idea that any one, simple chemical can ever make you smarter in any general way without adverse consequences. Evolution has a lot of time to scope out all simple neurochemical effects, so beware studies that suggest they've found a "smart pill".

I think this is a very wise statement. In this case, caffeine is known to increase levels of stress hormones. Many studies have shown that memories during times of stress tend to be more vivid and enduring. (The extreme of this is PTSD.) So the study results are not at all surprising to me. I think more work would have to be done to tease out whether there is any independent effect.

Re:Memorization, or attention to detail?

[Thomas Miconi]

Did you miss the "post-study" bit in the title and abstract? Caffeine was delivered after stimulus presentation, excluding a purely sensory effect.

I guess you could do with a cup of coffee! ;)

Re:Memorization, or attention to detail?

[jeffb (2.718)]

To be fair, the summary got it exactly backward:

In a double-blind study, participants were shown a series of images soon after taking either a caffeine pill or a placebo;

Re:The detrimental effects for sleep thwart it for

[NewWorldDan]

Sleep? Nah. But caffeine is also one of the leading causes of diarrhea. So I'm off the stuff. Too bad, a cup of coffee or tea was a nice way to start the day.

Re:unable to rermember genuine history events

[hawkinspeter]

How can an atheist be evangelical? (Unless they're hypocrites - preaching Christianity without believing in it).

(Or, alternatively, what does athiest mean?)

Re:unable to rermember genuine history events

[Anonymous Coward]

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/atheists.png
"Personally, I find atheists just as annoying as fundamentalist christians."
"Well, the important thing is that you've found a way to feel superior to both."

At last, a cure for Slashdot dupes?

[ClickOnThis]

Well, we can hope. Drink up, editors!

Mentat drink

[WillAffleckUW]

The lips carry a stain, the breath is of a dragon, The breath is a warning.

is it "awake people are more likely to remember"?

[guest235]

Caffeine will make you awake. And being awake seems like good idea for remembering images. If they woke people at 3am, caffeine would probably be even more beneficial. Bucket of cold water would probably work, too...

Re:unable to rermember genuine history events

[TangoMargarine]

"Evangelical" as in "evangelize" as in "everybody should know that I'm an atheist and therefore better than you."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zx7PNhl1Sg

Re:unable to rermember genuine history events

[hawkinspeter]

That's not really the meaning of evangelical/evangelize. It typically means to preach (christian) gospel. A better choice of word would be inform/teach/discuss/exhort etc. And yes, I'm an atheist.

All funded research is in fed database

[WillAffleckUW]

If any part of the research was funded by the feds, they have to publish it electronically on the national open access publications databases.

Maybe someone else can post a link to that copy?

I'm busy, but it might be easy to do.

Re:unable to rermember genuine history events

[TangoMargarine]

I guess I'm just suspicious why the words evangelize and evangelical would be so similar if they didn't refer to the same root word. Another win for our English language I suppose :P

Re:unable to rermember genuine history events

[TangoMargarine]

Well the goal of preaching is to convert people, yeah? I don't see why that has to be limited to any particular religion, or lack thereof. Convincing someone to be an atheist is just using different arguments, but it's still seeking to bring them around to your point of view. Or does 'preach' imply some amount of fervor? Because plenty of atheists have that as well.

Re:unable to rermember genuine history events

[hawkinspeter]

As far as I know, they do both come from the same root:

The word "evangelist" comes from the Koine Greek word Îá½Î±ÎÎÎÎÎÎν (transliterated as "euagelion") via Latinised Evangelium, as used in the canonical titles of the four Gospels, authored by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (also known as the Four Evangelists). The Greek word Îá½Î±ÎÎÎÎÎÎν originally meant a reward given to the messenger for good news (Îá½" = "good", á¼ÎÎÎÎÎÏ = "I bring a message"; the word "angel" comes from the same root) and later "good news" itself.

The verb form of euangelion, ehtoqualia[clarification needed] (translated as "evangelism"), occurs rarely in older Greek literature outside the New Testament, making its meaning more difficult to ascertain. Parallel texts of the Gospels of Luke and Mark reveal a synonymous relationship between the verb euangelizo (Îá½'αÎÎÎÎÎÎÏ) and a Greek verb kerusso (ÎÎÏÏ...ÏfÏfÏ), which means "to proclaim".[2]

It's from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelism/ but Slashdot doesn't like the greek.

I like to start my day with a monster drink

[pebear]

That is why I like to start my day with a monster drink and then just before supper I like to break out the peace pipe and have a few hits. Supper always tastes better with a buzz on. And no you do not kill brain cells with weed, alcohol does that. And it's not your father's weed, it's much more potent. Well I hope so, that just means I"m getting what I paid for and my father got ripped off...

interesting . sponsored by Folger's?

[raymorris]

That's interesting. I do wonder about ONE study that contradicts widely held knowledge.