Want To Boost Your Memory? Try Two Cups of Coffee After Learning
Coffee fiends like me love to use coffee canister. Proper storage is an essential but easily overlooked factor in coffee’s taste. So, here goes. A new study finds that people who consume caffeine shortly after learning something show impressive memory gains 24 hours later.
Scientists have long known that our memories are unstable in the minutes or hours after they’re first created. During this period, called ‘consolidation’, the memory moves into long-term storage and into a fairly stable molecular state. (Caveat: Stable memories become unstable again whenever you recall them, as I wrote about a few weeks ago.)
In the new study, published today in Nature Neuroscience, researchers from the University of California, Irvine, wanted to see whether caffeine affects the memory consolidation process. They recruited young adults who don’t usually drink much coffee — less than 500 milligrams of caffeine a week, or about five cups of coffee — and who hadn’t had any before the experiment. The volunteers were shown lots of pictures of objects, such as a seahorse, a basket, and a saxophone, and then asked whether each picture depicted an indoor or outdoor item. Soon after looking at the pictures, the volunteers took a pill containing either 200 milligrams of caffeine (which is equivalent to about two cups of coffee) or a placebo.
Read more at...