Feeling more alert after drinking coffee could be due in part to a placebo effect

Researchers in Spain and Portugal have studied coffee drinkers to see if the wake-up effect associated with having the first cup of coffee in the morning is due to the properties of the caffeine or just to experience to drink coffee.

To do this, they looked with magnetic resonance imaging to see which areas of the brain are activated by the experience of drinking a cup of coffee or by drinking water with an equivalent amount of caffeine, and they have discovered that in both cases areas are activated that make people feel more alert.

However, with the experience of drinking are activated areas of the brain that affect work memory and the goal-directed behavior, which does not happen with caffeine alone.

“There is a common expectation that coffee increases the alertness and psychomotor functioning,” says Professor Nuno Sousafrom the University of Minho (Portugal), corresponding author of the study published in ‘Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience’ and chief field editor of the journal.

“When you come to better understand the mechanisms underlying a biological phenomenonavenues are opened to explore the factors that can modulate it and even the benefits potentials of that mechanism,” he adds.