Caffeine is found in coffee, tea, chocolate, energy drinks, and many more. Moreover, it is a widely consumed psychoactive substance across the globe.
In a study published in Communications Biology, researchers from Montreal talk about how it can modify sleep. In addition, it can also influence your brain’s recovery, which includes both physical and cognitive.
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.
They showed that caffeine increases the brain’s complexity by enhancing it.
Karim Jerbi said,
“Criticality describes a state of the brain that is balanced between order and chaos,”
“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.”
Carrier added,
“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.”
