America and the rest of the world loves their coffee. But, regular intake of coffee, cola or energy drinks have been found to temporarily change the gray matter of the brain, researchers have now found. These most widely consumed psychoactive substances, according to the research team led by Dr. Carolin Reichert and Professor Christian Cajochen at University of Basel , were looked at to determine if drinking caffeine in the evening disrupted our sleep. Which would in turn affect our gray matter of the brain.
The results were a bit surprising. They found that sleep was unaffected but not gray matter.
Gray matter refers to the cell bodies of nerve cells within the central nervous system as apposed to white matter which is primarily the long chained neural pathways of the nerve cells.
The Study
They took a group of 20 young healthy adults who drank coffee daily and gave them tablets to take over two 10-day periods, and were asked not to drink any other caffeine during the study. During one study period they were given tablets with caffeine, in the other period they were given a placebo. At the end of each 10 -day study period their gray matter was examined as well as sleep quality using an EEG to record their brain wave electrical activity.
The data was compared and showed that both the caffeine and non- caffeinated group sleep depth and overall quality was not affected. But, they saw a significant increased amount of gray matter in the placebo group than the caffeinated one.
Further analysis showed distinct changes particularly in the right medial temporal lobe and the hippocampus, a region essential for memory.
They concluded that the results of daily consumption of caffeine didn’t necessarily negatively impact the brain . But, it did affect our cognitive processes and should give rise to further study.
It was also noted that caffeine studies in the past have always looked at its findings on patients and less on healthy subjects.
It appears that caffeine does reduce the volume of gray matter but after just 10 days of abstaining it had significantly regenerated in the test subjects.
These changes were seen to be temporary and other comparative studies between daily caffeine drinkers and occasional to no caffeine consumers are lacking.
– A balanced brain is a better brain-