Ain't about how fast I get there, ain't about what's waiting on the other side. It's the climb.
In other words, the routine or trappings that go with drinking coffee appear to be key to the eye-opening alertness it is said to bring - even more so than caffeine, coffee's de facto active ingredient.
"Taking into account that some of the effects that we found were reproduced by caffeine, we could expect other caffeinated drinks to share some of the effects," said Maria Picó-Pérez of Jaume I University. "However, others were specific for coffee drinking, driven by factors such as the particular smell and taste of the drink, or the psychological expectation associated with consuming that drink," she added.
Writing up the of their tests for the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, the Iberian team said the MRI scans showed"consuming either caffeine or coffee made people more prepared to move from resting to working on tasks." However, the tests, published June 28, showed that drinking coffee"also increased the connectivity in the higher visual network and the right executive control network - parts of the brain which are involved in working memory, cognitive control and goal-directed behaviour," which they added"didn't happen when participants only took caffeine." – dpa