Everyone knows caffeine keeps you going – which helps you focus for longer and thus makes you smarter, but caffeine is also helping you to remember

Success in the world today, depends on being SMART. You need a combination of BOOK smarts and WORLD smarts, to rise to the top. Acquiring these SMARTS is hard work. It requires dedication, discipline and CAFFEINE, lots of CAFFEINE.

To get going and to keep going.

So caffeine is the drug of choice, for the GO GETTER. In fact, if truth be told, GO GETTERS are often JAVA JUNKIES.

The two edged sword

Being able to keep going and going, extends the time available for acquiring knowledge. A good thing when you are expected to assimilate 22 chapters of a textbook.

But there is GOING and there is GOING.

It can happen…………the brain is going, but the brain is not sufficiently tuned in, to register much.

This “lights on but no one is home” scenario…………… could make caffeine a two edged sword.

I BLANKED. I COULDN’T REMEMBER MY OWN NAME, NEVER MIND THE STUFF I STUDIED.

Caffeine is not to blame

Blanking, a horrific consequence of going and going and going, is not caffeine’s fault per se. This is the finding of a group of researchers from Johns Hopkins.

In fact, the John Hopkins teams discovered that caffeine is actually helping users, remember MORE, not just study MORE. The team uncovered this remarkable property of caffeine when they tested out the effects of caffeine on the ability to remember images from a slideshow.

Going to a slideshow

The slideshow was not merely a collection of pretty pictures, it was designed to be challenging. The images included in the slideshow were selected because on the surface they looked similar, but in reality they were different. Viewers of the slide show had to do some serious remembering to be able to pin point which images were repeats and which images were new, really new.

The researchers invited a group of volunteers, who were not big caffeine consumers, to view their challenging slideshow.

At the end of the first viewing of the slide show, the participants were given a “pill” to take. The pill either contained nothing or it contained 200 mg of caffeine i.e. a very very very strong cup of coffee. The participants returned to the lab the next day, for a follow up viewing at which time, they were asked to identify which images were old, and which were new.

NOTE : Each participant did the slideshow test both on and off caffeine.

The brain on caffeine

When the participants received a shot of caffeine, after the viewing…………..they were much better at remembering which images were old and which images were new.

Since the set up was designed in such a way that the caffeine was administered, after the learning had taken place, the improvement in memory seen in the study, was unlikely to be simply due to the fact that the people were more attentive .

The caffeine helped them remember, not just pay more attention.

The smarter you

Drinks caffeine routinely throughout the day because

• It tastes good
• Creates good body chemistry – in moderation and
• Improves your thinking

Of course, the smart you understands that sleep is an important component of remembering too, so you avoid caffeine overloads in the evening, because too much of a good thing, can be a bad thing.

Further reading

Caffeine helps create sweet memories	Living on caffeine alone is possible	A cup of coffee gets old muscles  buzzing too

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