Cerebral Cortex: Regular coffee drinking affects the structure of the brain, but it seems temporary!

February 20, 2021 // -- Caffeine is the world's most widely consumed psychoactive substance in coffee, cola or energy drinks, and scientists from institutions such as the University of Basel in Switzerland recently found that regular coffee consumption may alter the gray matter region of the brain, but the effect appears to be temporary.
There is no doubt that caffeine can make us more awake, but if we drink coffee at night, our normal sleep may be disturbed, as previous studies have found, and lack of sleep affects the gray matter region of the brain; In the study, researcher Caroline Reichert and others investigated the problem; the results surprised the researchers, who noted that caffeine intake did not cause poor sleep, but the researchers observed changes in the gray matter region of the participants' brains.
photo source: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Brain Gray mass refers to a part of the central nervous system consisting mainly of nerve cells, while white mass consists mainly of neural path paths, the long extension of nerve cells.
article, the researchers included a study of 20 healthy young people who regularly consumed coffee every day for 10 consecutive days and were asked not to consume any other caffeine during that time.
In one study, participants took caffeine-containing pills, while in another, participants took pills with no active ingredients as a control group; after a 10-day study, the researchers examined the volume of gray matter in the participants' brains using brain scans, and the researchers also measured the quality of sleep in their sleep experiments by recording their brain electrical activity (EEG).
Sleep was not affected but the brain gray matter was compared with the data, and the researchers found that the participants' deep sleep was equal, regardless of whether they consumed caffeine or a placebo capsule, but there were significant differences in brain gray matter between the two groups, depending on the participants' intake of caffeine or a placebo.
10 days after taking the placebo, participants in the caffeine withdrawal group (control group) had a larger volume of gray mass in their brains than those who took caffeine capsules during the same period.
differences are particularly pronounced in the inner temporal lobe on the right side of the brain, including the hema region, which is essential for memory consolidation. Reichert, a
researcher, said the findings don't mean that caffeine intake has a negative effect on the brain, but regular coffee drinking clearly affects the body's cognitive abilities, which may require further research to confirm;
Finally, the researchers said that while caffeine intake appeared to reduce the volume of gray matter in the brain, gray matter in the brain regenerated significantly after just 10 days of coffee withdrawal;
() Original source: Yu-Shiuan Lin et al, Daily Caffeine Intakes Center-Dependent Medial Temporal Plasticity in Humans: A Multimodal Double-Blind RandomIzed Control Trial, Cerebral Cortex (2021). DOI:10.1093/cercor/bhab005