{"id":3373,"date":"2018-05-14T08:00:18","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T13:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=3373"},"modified":"2018-05-08T09:37:20","modified_gmt":"2018-05-08T14:37:20","slug":"caffeine-and-cognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/caffeine-and-cognition\/","title":{"rendered":"When You Want Higher Brain Entropy, Add Caffeine"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the past, \"caffeine<\/a>I’ve posted about the learning benefits of wine<\/a> and of chocolate<\/a>. Today — to complete the trifecta — I’ve found research into the benefits of caffeine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(You can thank me with a cup of java later.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Caffeine and Cognition: The Simple Study<\/h2>\n

This study could not have been simpler. Researchers had students lie quietly in an fMRI scanner in a caffeine-free state on one day. After 48 hours, the same students took a caffeine pill and repeated the scan.<\/p>\n

(Just to be sure that order didn’t matter, half of the students took the pill first for the first scan. The other half took the pill for the second scan.)<\/p>\n

What did they find?<\/p>\n

Caffeine and Cognition: The Complicated Results<\/h2>\n

After they took the caffeine pill, the students had more good brain stuff<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In this case, the good brain stuff was “brain entropy.”<\/p>\n

What’s that? According to this study<\/a>, the<\/p>\n

concept of brain entropy has been defined as the number of neural states a given brain can access.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The same study also finds that higher levels of intelligence — measured by the Shipley Vocabulary test and WASI Matrix Reasoning test — are associated with higher levels of brain entropy.<\/p>\n

(Important note: “associated with” doesn’t mean “cause.” It means that people who have higher levels of one often have higher levels of the other. But, we shouldn’t — in fact, can’t — infer causality.)<\/p>\n

If we’re feeling daring, we might pose this hypothesis: taking caffeine raises brain entropy, and brain entropy helps you think better.<\/p>\n

That’s an especially tempting hypothesis because caffeine increases brain entropy in the pre-frontal cortex. You hear a lot about the PFC and Learning and the Brain conferences, because so many important cognitive and self-regulatory functions use those networks.<\/p>\n

What Should Teachers Do?<\/h2>\n

At present, this study points in the direction of that tempting hypothesis. But, it doesn’t directly support it.<\/p>\n

We need lots more testing to confirm this idea.<\/p>\n

In fact, the whole concept of “brain entropy” is still in its early stages, and we need to investigate the fully idea before we reach strong conclusions based upon it.<\/p>\n

So: ponder brain entropy while you’re drinking your next cup of joe. You’ve got lots to consider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taking caffeine increases your level of “brain entropy,” a measurement of the “different neural states that a brain can access.” High brain entropy just might be good…and so it might also be good for caffeine to raise it. Clearly, the relationship between caffeine and cognition is complicated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":3377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[70,17],"class_list":["post-3373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-diet","tag-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3373"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3375,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3373\/revisions\/3375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}