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Effects of caffeine and glucose, alone and combined, on cognitive performance
Author(s) -
Adan Ana,
SerraGrabulosa Josep Maria
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
human psychopharmacology: clinical and experimental
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.461
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1099-1077
pISSN - 0885-6222
DOI - 10.1002/hup.1115
Subject(s) - caffeine , effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance , morning , cognition , memory consolidation , psychology , task (project management) , audiology , medicine , neuroscience , psychiatry , management , hippocampus , economics
Objective To study the effects of consuming caffeine and glucose, alone and combined, on cognitive performance. Methods Seventy‐two healthy subjects (36 women; age range 18–25) were tested early in the morning, having fasted overnight. Using a double‐blind, randomised design, subjects received one of the following beverages: water (150 ml); water plus 75 mg of caffeine; water plus 75 g of glucose; water plus and 75 mg of caffeine and 75 g of glucose. Attention, manual dexterity, visuo‐spatial and frontal functions, memory (immediate, consolidation and working) and subjective state were all assessed. Results The combination of caffeine and glucose had beneficial effects on attention (sequential reaction time tasks) and on learning and consolidation of verbal memory, effects not being observed when either substance was administered alone. Caffeine only showed improvement in simple reaction time and glucose in simple and one sequential reaction time tasks and in the manual dexterity assembly task. Conclusions The results indicate that the synergistic effects of caffeine and glucose can benefit sustained attention and verbal memory, even with adequate levels of activation of the subjects. However, further studies are required, controlling for different levels of cognitive effort and also considering measurements of neural activity. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.