David Cooper

It's nudging your brain towards impulsive, reckless decisions.

Even fruit flies lose their cool when they're given coffee.

Let's discuss all of this with biology professor at the University of Texas, El Paso, Kyung-An Han.

Kay, welcome to the show.

Now, caffeine, using it to stay up late at work, to try to be focused.

Is that a good idea?

Did we think that was a good idea going into your study?

Okay.

So let's talk about it.

Let's talk about our favorite drug.

We use it to stay sharp.

It might be good at doing that, but what else is it doing to us?

That's interesting.

So impulsiveness for a fruit fly is like being more dangerous with predators, not flying properly when there's wind.

What might nighttime impulsiveness look like for us if we drink too much coffee late into the evening?

negative in a way that you don't want to fly around when you do not you you're not supposed to now you mentioned the night shift workers where it might actually be useful because it keeps them awake alert better to focus all that exactly but there's some jobs where impulsiveness would be a terrible thing like maybe a surgeon an air traffic controller would you recommend for those folks maybe not drinking too much coffee late into the night

Now, when I hear about experiments with fruit flies, I kind of naturally wonder how much of the results would translate into human behavior.

How do we make that leap?

How do we say, OK, we've observed it in fruit flies.

We also suspect it might happen in humans, too.