Late Night Coffee and Impulsiveness
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What surprising effect does drinking coffee at night have?
The day is done. We're just getting started. The last show. Do you drink coffee to stay sharp, focused, and in control? I certainly do. But what if that late night cup you're grabbing secretly is doing the opposite of those things? 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.
Thank you for inviting me. I'm excited to talk to you about our recent study on caffeine's effect on behavior.
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?
How does caffeine influence impulsive behavior?
Well, what do you mean by good? I think good is really subjective. I mean, if your goal is to stay awake to study finals, obviously it's a good idea to drink coffee whenever you need it. But you just need to watch out not to drive afterwards because you don't want to drive through yellow lights.
Okay.
Oh, I suppose that's what- That would be impulsivity.
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?
Well, actually, caffeine has been used by people, athletes, to enhance their physical performance as well. So when caffeine acts on muscle, it increases production of ATP. So it is known as actually performance enhancer. Obviously, it's not really like other illegal kind of enhancer, but nonetheless, it has been helpful to some individuals. And obviously, it is also a cognitive enhancer as well, too, meaning it tends to increase your attention to the task.
What insights does Kyung-An Han provide about their caffeine study?
More importantly, it makes you be awake. So whenever you need to study last minute for final exam, or whether you need to work at night for night shift workers, this will help people to be awake. In that sense, it's really helpful. But like everything, every chemical that we intake, too much is always detrimental. But what we demonstrate is that also time of day is also critical as well too. In our study, Drinking coffee during the daytime could be bad because it will make you not sleeping well because it reduces sleep time as well as quality of sleep, but nonetheless people sleep. But one drink coffee at night, I don't know, I do have a really good experience with it too. I had to drink a lot of coffee to finish my proposal.
And then that was at work. When I drove home, I had strong urge to drive through yellow light. I mean, this is exactly what food flies do. So when they get coffee at night, but not during the daytime, they become a little more impulsive. So in a condition where they need to control their behavior, like a strong airflow, which is like a wind, or sound of predators then they need to stop not to get seen but they all of a sudden show impulsive flying so because they cannot control their behavior really well so i think this is a really good example of how caffeine interact with time of day to provide something that is not typically seen with what they typically do during the daytime.
Is it safe to drink coffee late at night for focus?
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?
Well, I can tell you this much. You don't want to talk to your parents about your obviously secret that you don't want to share with your parents, for example. Impulsivity can be cognition as well as movement. Obviously, we study impulsivity on movement because animal model that we are studying is foot flies. So it's harder for us to ask them how well that they are controlling their cognition, although we measure their capacity to learn and remember. We haven't studied the effect of caffeine regarding its impact on their memory, but this is another step that we are approaching in the next step. So at least in their performance, they cannot control their behavior, and then they become impulsive, which is
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What surprising effect does drinking coffee at night have?
0:04–0:56
2
How does caffeine influence impulsive behavior?
0:56–2:04
3
What insights does Kyung-An Han provide about their caffeine study?
2:04–3:49
4
Is it safe to drink coffee late at night for focus?
3:49–7:08
5
What are the potential risks of nighttime caffeine consumption?
7:08–10:05
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Last Show with David Cooper
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