I don't care about this since I'm one of those who processes caffeine quickly.
Genetics determine how much coffee you can drink before it goes wrong
I'm doing a 12 cup pot of coffee a day to lessen my chances of dementia and Parkinsons. Tell me EXACTLY how much coffee to drink for that and I'll change. Yep, that is a lot more than the 400mg. suggested limit, I don't care! Preventing dementia and Parkinsons is vastly more important than whatever problems it can cause!
Caffeine Disrupts Sleep Brainwaves and Delays Nighttime Recovery
Summary: A new study reveals that caffeine increases the complexity of brain activity during sleep, especially in younger adults, potentially disrupting the brain’s ability to recover overnight. Researchers used EEG and AI to analyze sleep in 40 adults after caffeine or placebo intake, identifying less predictable brain signals and increased wake-like brainwave patterns.
Caffeine altered deep sleep rhythms by dampening theta and alpha waves while stimulating beta waves linked to alertness. These effects were most pronounced in 20-somethings, likely due to age-related differences in adenosine receptor density, suggesting younger brains are more vulnerable to caffeine’s nighttime impact.
Key Facts:
- Sleep Disruption: Caffeine reduced slow-wave sleep rhythms and increased beta wave activity, keeping the brain in a more alert state overnight.
- Criticality Increase: Caffeine pushed the brain into a higher state of complexity, balancing order and chaos, even during sleep.
- Age Sensitivity: Younger adults (20–27) experienced stronger effects due to higher adenosine receptor density.
Source: University of Montreal
Caffeine
is not only found in coffee, but also in tea, chocolate, energy drinks
and many soft drinks, making it one of the most widely consumed
psychoactive substances in the world.
In a study published in April in Nature Communications Biology,
a team of researchers from Université de Montréal shed new light on how
caffeine can modify sleep and influence the brain’s recovery, both
physical and cognitive, overnight.
The research was led by
Philipp Thölke, a research trainee at UdeM’s Cognitive and
Computational Neuroscience Laboratory (CoCo Lab), and co-led by the
lab’s director Karim Jerbi, a psychology professor and researcher at
Mila – Quebec AI Institute.
Working with with sleep-and-aging
psychology professor Julie Carrier and her team at UdeM’s Centre for
Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine, the scientists used AI and
electroencephalography (EEG) to study caffeine’s effect on sleep.
They
showed for the first time that caffeine increases the complexity of
brain signals and enhances brain “criticality” during sleep.
Interestingly, this was more pronounced in younger adults.
“Criticality describes
a state of the brain that is balanced between order and chaos,” said
Jerbi. “It’s like an orchestra: too quiet and nothing happens, too
chaotic and there’s cacophony.
“Criticality is the happy medium
where brain activity is both organized and flexible. In this state, the
brain functions optimally: it can process information efficiently, adapt
quickly, learn and make decisions with agility.”
Added Carrier:
“Caffeine stimulates the brain and pushes it into a state of
criticality, where it is more awake, alert and reactive While this is
useful during the day for concentration, this state could interfere with
rest at night: the brain would neither relax nor recover properly.”
40 adults studied
To study how caffeine affects the sleeping brain, Carrier’s team recorded the nocturnal brain activity of 40 healthy adults using an electroencephalogram. They compared each participant’s brain activity on two separate nights — one when they consumed caffeine capsules three hours and then one hour before bedtime, and another when they took a placebo at the same times.
“We used advanced statistical analysis and artificial intelligence to identify subtle changes in neuronal activity,” said Thölke, the study’s first author.
“The results
showed that caffeine increased the complexity of brain signals,
reflecting more dynamic and less predictable neuronal activity,
especially during the non-rapid eye movement (NREM) phase of sleep
that’s crucial for memory consolidation and cognitive recovery.”
The
researchers also discovered striking changes in the brain’s electrical
rhythms during sleep: caffeine attenuated slower oscillations such as
theta and alpha waves, generally associated with deep, restorative
sleep, and stimulated beta wave activity, which is more common during
wakefulness and mental engagement.
“These changes suggest that
even during sleep, the brain remains in a more activated, less
restorative state under the influence of caffeine,” says Jerbi, who also
holds the Canada Research Chair in Computational Neuroscience and
Cognitive Neuroimaging.
“This change in the brain’s rhythmic activity may help explain why caffeine affects the efficiency with which the brain recovers during the night, with potential consequences for memory processing.”
People in their 20s more affected
The study also showed that the effects of caffeine on brain dynamics were significantly more pronounced in young adults between ages 20 and 27 compared to middle-aged participants aged 41 to 58, especially during REM sleep, the phase associated with dreaming.
Young adults showed
a greater response to caffeine, likely due to a higher density of
adenosine receptors in their brains. Adenosine is a molecule that
gradually accumulates in the brain throughout the day, causing a feeling
of fatigue.
“Adenosine receptors naturally decrease with age,
reducing caffeine’s ability to block them and improve brain complexity,
which may partly explain the reduced effect of caffeine observed in
middle-aged participants,” Carrier said.
And these age-related differences suggest that younger brains may be more susceptible to the stimulant effects of caffeine.
Given
caffeine’s widespread use around the world, especially as a daily
remedy for fatigue, the researchers stress the importance of
understanding its complex effects on brain activity across different age
groups and health conditions.
They add that further research is
needed to clarify how these neural changes affect cognitive health and
daily functioning, and to potentially guide personalized recommendations
for caffeine intake.
About this caffeine, sleep, and neuroscience research news
Author: Julie Gazaille
Source: University of Montreal
Contact: Julie Gazaille – University of Montreal
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Caffeine induces age-dependent increases in brain complexity and criticality during sleep” by Philipp Thölke et al. Communications Biology
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