The mechanism underlying the shift in FC toward efficient network properties after coffee consumption remains to be determined. In addition, the cardiostimulatory effects of caffeine are considered to result from interactions with both adenosine and phosphodiesterase The caffeine-induced increases in dopamine and glutamate concentrations, coupled with phosphodiesterase inhibition, could be considered as a crucial mechanism underlying the net increase in the central nervous system and cardiovascular activity.

Based on the actions of caffeine, it is plausible that the stimulatory effects of caffeine might directly lead to the reorganization of network properties toward a state of increased efficiency. A recent fMRI study showed that habitual coffee drinkers had distinct brain FC properties from non-coffee drinkers, which could support our speculation Further studies are needed to unveil the mechanisms underlying the changes in network properties after coffee consumption.

Our findings of improved performance in the Digit Span Forward test suggest that attentional function could be enhanced by coffee consumption, which is in line with previous observations that coffee consumption has beneficial effects on attention 7 , 34 , 35 , In addition, our findings of greater performance in the Digit Span Backward test 18 after coffee consumption may support findings from previous studies that have shown the role of coffee in improving working memory 37 , 38 , A recent functional magnetic resonance imaging fMRI study found that the alerting network, known as being responsible for maintaining an alert state throughout task performance, recruited a distributed network of brain regions, primarily the thalamus and bilateral fronto-parietal regions 40 , Based on these fMRI findings, our results that FC changes after coffee consumption are mainly observed in the fronto-centro-parietal regions imply that improvement of attentional function might be derived from activation of the alerting network.

We also found that performance in the Trail Making Test Part B was improved after coffee consumption and that the degree of improvement of the test was correlated with the changes in graph measures reflecting a shift toward more efficient network properties.

It is well known that the Trail Making Test Part B is a representative tool for evaluating the ability of executive function responsible for psychomotor speed, visuospatial searching, target-directed motor tracking, and set-shifting Therefore, our findings further support previous studies that showed the beneficial effects of caffeine on executive function and psychomotor speed 4 , 5 , Performance of executive controls requires activation of widespread prefrontal regions in concert with the anterior cingulate cortex 4 , 44 , These brain areas have been shown to be upregulated by caffeine 39 , 46 , supporting the stimulatory effects of caffeine on executive function.

Moreover, dopamine was found to be a critical neurotransmitter for supporting executive function in these areas Given that dopamine concentrations can be increased by caffeine through blockade of the inhibitory properties of adenosine, caffeine may enhance executive function through the interaction of dopaminergic pathways with anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortical regions.

Our findings of the relationship between improved executive function and graph measures suggest that changing network topology toward more efficient network properties might be a crucial mechanism underlying the beneficial effects of coffee on executive function.

Our speculation is supported by prior studies using fMRI that found increases in FC in multiple brain regions during the performance of the Trail Making Test Part B 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , In addition, the aforementioned relationships were mainly observed in the alpha band, which is in accordance with a recent study showing that executive functions have a positive relationship with alpha coherence between regions of the right and left hemispheres Taken together, our findings support those of previous studies that coffee may enhance the FC responsible for performance on executive function, especially in the alpha band.

Meanwhile, we did not find any changes in nodal graph measures after coffee consumption in the alpha band. The changes in global network properties without any region-specific changes in the alpha band suggest that coffee consumption might further enhance the improvement of physiological network efficiency responsible for activating cognitive function across the whole brain, rather than causing changes in the network properties of specific localized areas.

Given the involvement of the dopaminergic pathways in executive function 47 , another plausible explanation is that our findings of changes in cortico-cortical network properties may not fully reflect the interactions of subcortical dopaminergic pathways with the cortical areas responsible for executive function.

We did not find any relationship between performance in Digit Span tests and graph measures. However, it is plausible that there was a ceiling effect in the performance of the Digit Span tests in our cognitively normal population. There are several limitations of the present study that should be considered when interpreting our results.

First, our study population was relatively small, and was only composed of highly educated young adults. Therefore, our results could not be generalized to the overall population, especially to the elderly. Second, we did not measure individual differences in biological susceptibility to caffeine or expectancy for coffee drinking to stimulate cognitive function Further studies incorporating measurements of caffeine blood level and investigation of a subjective expectation of coffee drinking as a cognitive enhancer may clarify the dose—response relationship and main contributor of the FC changes.

Third, the results of the neuropsychological tests after coffee consumption may be biased due to learning effects. However, learning effects were likely mitigated by the use of different sets of contents in the repetition of the same tests. Finally, since canned coffee contains various ingredients other than caffeine, it is unclear whether our results were due to the effect of caffeine or the combined effects with other ingredients.

Nevertheless, our study is the first EEG network analysis investigating the effects of canned coffee, containing a precisely controlled content of caffeine, on neurocognitive function.

The strength of our study is that FC was evaluated using two methods, coherence and PLI, which were compared to mitigate the limitations of scalp-level EEG analysis. We used two representative building blocks for characterizing brain FC in sensor space, coherence, and PLI, and obtained consistent results.

Coherence is the most common method used to quantify the correlation between signals from different brain regions in terms of both amplitude and phase.

In contrast, PLI measures the stability of the phase differences of short- and long-range neuronal activities over time independent of the amplitude of oscillations. This method is designed to reliably estimate phase synchronization against the presence of common sources such as volume conduction and active reference electrodes.

In brief, it can be accomplished by discarding 0 and π phase differences between two time series We used supervised machine learning methods including support vector machine SVM , k-nearest neighbor kNN , decision tree, naïve Bayes, linear discriminant analysis LDA , and logistic regression.

This limited accuracy obtained may be because those machine learning techniques do not properly reflect geometric information based on channel locations.

Observing the changes in functional connectivity between specific channels Figs. We note that several methods have been used to distinguish the EEG of patients with depression from control 53 , 54 , 55 , In particular, some methods had been proposed that detect depression with good accuracy using three-electrode EEG devices 54 , This suggests that performing channel selection with methods such as kernel-target alignment 56 may provide additional insights into coffee consumption by identifying the key channels.

We leave this to a future study. Our results support the general belief and previous notion that coffee improves cognitive function. Moreover, our findings suggest that the beneficial effects of coffee might be attributed to reorganization of FC toward more efficient network properties.

Our findings of changes in network properties may provide novel insights into the biological mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of coffee on cognitive function.

Furthermore, the patterns of network reorganization could be quantitative markers for elucidating the mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of coffee on cognition, especially executive function.

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Department of Neurology, Korea University Anam Hospital, Korea University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea. Department of Neurology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea. Department of Neurology, Korea University Guro Hospital, Korea University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Laboratory of Computational Neurophysics, Brain Science Institute, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul, Republic of Korea. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. Conceptualization: H.

Soon Ho , K. Sung Hoon , S. Seong Hwan , J. Correspondence to Kyungreem Han or Jung Bin Kim. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material.

Health care providers play an important role in helping patients become more physically active to improve their health. They can:. Active People, Healthy Nation SM is a CDC initiative to help people be more physically active.

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Subjects were required to visit the laboratory with an empty belly and to abstain from drinking beverages containing caffeine and from use of other psychoactive substances or medication for at least 24 h before every experimental trial.

All subjects were fully informed of the nature and possible risks of the study. After that, written informed consent was obtained from all subjects before study enrollment.

The study followed the ethical guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the local ethics committee at Shanghai University in Sport, Shanghai, China No.

Subjects visited the laboratory four times, at the same time of day. When participants arrived in the dimly lit room where experiments were to be conducted, they were seated in a comfortable chair in front of a computer monitor. In order to obtain baseline measurements of performance on the Stroop task, each subject sat quietly for 5 min and watched a black screen.

After a min delay, during which the optode grid remained in place, participants once again performed the same Stroop task POST. The crossover, double-blind design was used in the present study. All subjects completed all experiment conditions, which were separated by 1 week to ensure drug washout period.

Caffeine hydrate Wako Pure Chemical Industries, Ltd. The dosage of each condition was calculated according to the weight. In this way, researchers and subjects could not identify caffeine according to the appearance and taste of the capsule.

The Stroop task is widely used to evaluate selective attention, cognitive flexibility, and processing speed Pauw et al. It was programmed and performed on E-prime 1. Each trial was displayed as follows: a fixed cross in the center of the screen for ms and a stimulus duration for ms.

There were two kinds of stimuli in current study: congruent and incongruent conditions. The congruent condition is composed of three Chinese color words i. And the incongruent condition consisted of the same three-color words, whose color was completely different from the meaning of the color words e.

Subjects were required to figure out the presenting color of each word by using the numeric keypad as the response apparatus. Participants performed two blocks of trials. Each block included 60 congruent and 60 incongruent trials, which were randomly presented. To prevent participants from anticipating a stimulus, the interval between appearance of the fixed cross and presentation of the stimulus was randomly differed between and ms, with the fixed inter-stimulus interval ISI duration of 1, ms.

Both RT and accuracy ACC were recorded for further analysis. We used a multichannel, continuous wave, NIRS instrument NIRScout, NIRx Medical Technologies LLC, Minneapolis, MN, United States for monitoring hemodynamic activity during performance of the task and during the resting state.

The sampling rate was 3. The NIRS probe included 16 dual-wavelength sources and nm and 15 optical detectors, which covered the frontal and parietal areas bilaterally Figure 1.

One emitter and one detector 3 cm apart formed a channel. Forty channels were assessed: 20 distributed throughout the frontal area and 20 distributed throughout parietal areas. The correspondence between NIRS channel locations and specific brain regions was established by Okamoto et al. Figure 1.

The spatial profile of functional near-infrared spectral imaging fNIRS probes. The red circles indicate the 16 optical sources, the green circles indicate the 15 detectors, and the black numbers 1—40 indicate fNIRS channels.

The optical sources and detectors were positioned on the international 10—20 standard positions. Optical data were transformed into hemoglobin signals with arbitrary units in accordance with the modified Beer—Lambert law Cope et al. It has been reported that HbO signals have a better signal-to-noise ratio than HbR signals Niu et al.

The HbO data were analyzed with nirsLAB software. After discontinuous shifts were removed from the time series dataset, HbO signals were bandpass-filtered between 0. Bandpass filtering was performed by a high-pass filter with a cutoff frequency of 0.

Hemodynamic data were then baseline-corrected based on the mean value of all signals from each block 5 s before to 15 s after the block. The HbO data were then averaged across subjects Chen et al.

The region of interest ROI channels were defined as those channels with maximal HbO. After HbO was averaged across subjects, mean HbO during the congruent and incongruent conditions was subtracted from mean HbO during the resting state. The mean difference between the single-cognitive task and resting state sessions was arranged according to descending magnitude, for each channel Chen et al.

The multichannel NIRS space was transformed into traditional Montreal Neurological Institute space Cutini et al. Channels of interest were related to three ROIs on the basis of their spatial distribution relative to the automated anatomical labeling template Table 1.

HbO values were then averaged through channels within a given ROI. Statistical analyses were conducted with SPSS One-sample Kolmogorov—Smirnov test was used to test whether data were normally distributed. When data are not normally distributed, statistical analysis was performed on the logarithmic transformation of the data.

Then alterations in RT, ACC, and averaged HbO data for all frequencies in a given ROI were subjected to 4 × 2 repeated-measures ANOVAs. For cases in which the assumption of sphericity was violated, the Greenhouse—Geisser correction was used to reduce the likelihood of a Type I error.

If significant main or interaction effects were found, post-hoc analyses were carried out with a Bonferroni correction. Partial eta 2 P η 2 was used as a measure of ES in the case of ANOVA.

Data are presented as mean ± SD. These results confirmed that Stroop interference could be generally observed between the congruent and incongruent conditions.

There was no significant difference in RT between CAF3 and CAF6. There was no significant interaction for ACC Table 2. We found no significant interaction for ACC Table 2. A 4 × 2 mixed ANOVA revealed that there was no significant interaction for mean HbO in ROI-1 Figure 2A , ROI-2 Figure 2B , or ROI-3 Figure 2C.

Figure 2. Changes in the mean [HbO] of incongruent condition in the DLPFC A , FPA B , and VLPFC C. HbO, oxygenated hemoglobin; DLPFC, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; FPA, frontal pole area; VLPFC, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex; PRE, before administration; POST, after administration.

Values are mean ± SD. In the CON group, mean HbO had significantly decreased at 60 min after administration of the placebo, as compared with baseline values. Figure 3. Changes in the mean [HbO] of congruent condition in DLPFC A , FPA B , and VLPFC C. Significant PRE vs. Compared with baseline values, mean HbO after 60 min showed a significant decrease in the CON group.

Compared with baseline values, mean HbO had significantly decreased at 60 min in the CON group. This novel study investigated the effects of ingestion of low, moderate, or high doses of caffeine typically used by athletes on cognition and brain activation using NIRS.

We found that ingestion of low doses of caffeine, but not moderate or high doses caffeine, decreased RT on the Stroop task, under the congruent and incongruent conditions, and increased mean HbO in three ROIs under the congruent condition.

Ingestion of moderate doses caffeine only decreased RT on the Stroop task, under the incongruent conditions. After consumption of low doses of caffeine, participants in our study showed decreased RT, accompanied by a significant decrease in interference effects.

These findings are similar to those reported by Kenemans et al. Similar to the present study, Souissi et al. Moreover, Ali et al. This discrepancy in results may reflect methodological differences related to the specific protocol used or the gender of the study participants.

Moreover, we observed that high doses of caffeine had no effect on cognitive performance. One possible explanation for this finding is that the ingestion of high doses of caffeine induces side effects such as gastrointestinal upset, nervousness, mental confusion, and inability to focus Graham and Spriet, Our data suggest that ingestion of low or moderate doses of caffeine ingestion decreases interference with successful performance on the Stroop task.

Previous studies have reported the activation of the lateral prefrontal cortex LPFC upon execution of the Stroop task. Banich et al. This may result in greater activation of relevant LPFC in the incongruent condition compared with the congruent condition.

Milham et al. Additionally, according to Krompinger and Simons , the DLPFC resolves conflicts that occur during information processing of incongruent stimuli during the Stroop task. Therefore, the Stroop performance is more related to activation of the DLPFC. In the present study, we found a significant main effect of condition for the mean HbO of the DLPFC: the mean HbO in the incongruent condition was higher than in the congruent condition.

These Stroop effect findings are similar to those in previous functional NIRS fNIRS studies, which suggested that executive functioning is associated with activation of DLPFC Xu et al.

Interestingly, we found different results with previous two fNIRS studies Xu et al. But DLPFC activation in the present study is consistent with that of a previous meta-analysis review on Stroop task-related fMRI, in which FPA and VLPFC also could not be significantly activated Nee et al.

Thus, more fNIRS or fMRI neuroimaging studies are needed to clarify the roles of FPA and VLPFC in the Stroop task. That caffeine improved the Stroop task performance may be related to activation of LPFC. Combining the above-mentioned opposite pattern in which the mean HbO of DLPFC in the incongruent condition was higher than that in the congruent condition, indicated that mean HbO of LPFC, especially DLPFC, has been increased during Stroop-interference processing in the incongruent condition, whereas following caffeine ingestion, the significant reduction was found in the activation of LPFC.

These results demonstrate that under high cognitive processing, the effects of caffeine on LPFC activation have been attenuated by higher demanding processing, whereas under low cognitive tasks, the effects of caffeine on LPFC activation are more pronounced, because the congruent condition in Stroop task involved less demanding processing.

The present results provide new evidences for previous studies that caffeine improvement of brain activation is induced more easily at the moment of the lowest values Niioka and Sasaki, ; Souissi et al. In the present study, under the congruent condition, no doses of caffeine ingestion affect the mean HbO.

These results contrast with those of previous studies, which found that ingestion of 75 or mg of caffeine was associated with decreased mean HbO on the Stroop task Niioka and Sasaki, ; Dodd et al. This discrepancy in results may reflect methodological differences related to the specific protocol used.

Therefore, use of the Stroop task should be standardized in future studies for investigating the effects of drugs on cerebral hemodynamic responses. These results are consistent with those of a previous fMRI study, which showed that ingestion of low-dose caffeine enhanced neuro-activation in the frontal cortex Diukova et al.

The increase in mean HbO during the Stroop task observed in this study after ingestion of low-dose caffeine may be related to an increase in regional cerebral blood volume rCBV. Caffeine acts as an adenosine receptor antagonist and consequently as an excitatory neuro-stimulant, thus enhancing neural activity Dunwiddie and Masino, and increasing rCBV.

These findings are in line with a report by Higashi et al. Caffeine also regulates cerebral perfusion and acts as a vasoconstrictor, decreasing CBF via the blockade of A2A and A2B receptors Laurienti et al.

Our observation that ingestion of low-dose caffeine increases mean HbO suggests that caffeine increases in rCBF via exciting neuro-stimulants outweigh caffeine decreases in rCBF via decreasing CBF.

Moderate-to-high doses of caffeine administrated 1 h before and during exercise have been known to increase endurance athletic performance. In contrast, recent evidence has shown an ergogenic effect of low and extremely low doses of caffeine taken late during a period of prolonged exercise Hogervorst et al.

Furthermore, low doses of caffeine do not affect peripheral whole-body responses to exercise and are associated with few, if any, side effects; Spriet suggested that low doses of caffeine ingestion improve exercise performance In this study, we observed that ingestion of low-dose caffeine had greater effect on cognition and brain activation than had moderate and high doses, which means that low doses of caffeine have greater effect on stimulating the CNS.

The present study maintained a few limitations. We used G-power to estimate the sample size, and the numbers of subjects in this study met the minimum sample size requirements. However, more samples are needed in the future research so that the research results can be further verified and repeated.

In the double-blind designed study, it is best to ask subjects which dose they think they ingested in each trail after completion of all groups and to outline why they identified which trial as which. However, in the present study, we did not note the responses of the subjects, so we could not assess the efficacy of blinding.

Although four conditions in the present study are difficultly for participants to identify, we should value the assessment of blinding in future studies.

Moreover, only Stroop task was used to measure executive function. There are other cognitive tasks on executive function, such as n-back and switching task.

Therefore, more tasks are need to measure to ensure effects of various doses of caffeine ingestion on executive function in the future. These results demonstrate that ingestion of low-dose caffeine has greater effects on cognition and brain activation than moderate and high doses of caffeine, suggesting that low-dose caffeine may be a selective supplement in enhancing executive function and prefrontal activities.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation, to any qualified researcher.

The study followed the ethical guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the local Ethics Committee at the Shanghai University in Sport, Shanghai, China No. XZ and YD conceived and supervised the study and designed the experiments. BZ and YL carried out the experiments.

YL and XW analyzed the data. BZ wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Ali, A. Caffeine ingestion enhances perceptual responses during intermittent exercise in female team-game players. doi: PubMed Abstract CrossRef Full Text Google Scholar.

Banich, M. fMRI studies of Stroop tasks reveal unique roles of anterior and posterior brain systems in attentional selection. Attentional selection and the processing of task-irrelevant information: insights from fMRI examinations of the Stroop task. CrossRef Full Text Google Scholar.

Bottoms, L. The effect of caffeine ingestion on skill maintenance and fatigue in epee fencers. Buxton, R. Modeling the hemodynamic response to brain activation.

Neuroimage 23, S—S Chen, Y. Selective effects of postural control on spatial vs. nonspatial working memory: a functional near- infrared spectral imaging study.

Cohen, J. A power primer. Cope, M. Methods of quantitating cerebral near infrared spectroscopy data. Cutini, S. A new method based on ICBM head surface for probe placement in multichannel fNIRS.

Neuroimage 54, — Diukova, A. Separating neural and vascular effects of caffeine using simultaneous EEG-fMRI: differential effects of caffeine on cognitive and sensorimotor brain responses. Neuroimage 62, — Dixit, A.

Effect of caffeine on information processing: evidence from Stroop task. Dodd, F. A double-blind, placebo-controlled study evaluating the effects of caffeine and L-theanine both alone and in combination on cerebral blood flow, cognition and mood. Regular physical activity can also reduce your risk of cognitive decline, including dementia.

One study found that cognitive decline is almost twice as common among adults who are inactive compared to those who are active. Regular physical activity can help you sleep and feel better, reduce the risk of some common cancers , and add years to your life. No matter your age or fitness level, any amount of physical activity can help.

Some benefits of physical activity on brain health start right after a session of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. For the most benefit, adults need at least minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity weekly or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity.

For example, moderate-intensity activity could be broken into 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week, or smaller bouts that add up. All adults also need muscle-strengthening activities two or more days a week.

And adults 65 and older need balance activities about three days a week. Remember that some activity is better than none, and every little bit counts.

Even some chores such as raking and bagging leaves, using a lawn mower, or vacuuming can help you get active. Get started by keeping track of your daily activities for one week with this diary [PDFKB].

Think about times throughout the day you could be physically active and make those times a regular part of your daily or weekly schedule. Find more tips to fit physical activity into your day with Move Your Way.

Health care providers play an important role in helping patients become more physically active to improve their health. They can:. Active People, Healthy Nation SM is a CDC initiative to help people be more physically active.

Skip directly to site content Skip directly to search. Español Other Languages. Physical Activity Boosts Brain Health. Minus Related Pages. Adult Weekly Physical Activity Recommendations minutes of moderate-intensity activity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity Muscle-strengthening two or more days a week.

See a sample schedule Adults 65 and older also need balance activities about three days a week. See a sample schedule. They can: Educate patients about the connection between physical activity and physical and mental health. Encourage patients to move more and sit less to meet the physical activity guidelines.