• Question: Does coffee help you think?

    Asked by hollywiggans to Philip on 20 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Philip Dolan

      Philip Dolan answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Yeah, to be honest just because when you’ve been working solidly at a problem for several hours I often find I solve it shortly after taking a break and thinking about something else. It kinda allows your brain to ‘digest’ the problem a bit. Also we often chat about what work we’re doing over coffee, and this leads to solutions sometimes too.

Comments

  • Photo: Jamie

    Jamie commented on :

    I have no questions to answer in my zone, so I’m butting in! *waves*
    Coffee can mess with your brain a bit though. If you are a spider at least. There was once an experiment where they gave little spiders different drugs then sent them to work making a web. Spiders on LSD and marijuana done quite well with a fairly normal web. The poor little spider on caffine didn’t have a clue what it was doing and just made some random strands then gave up…

  • Photo: Sue

    Sue commented on :

    Hi people! I’m going to butt in here too. I think the amount of coffee a person is used to drinking will also be a factor here. I saw some research a while back looking at people’s brain activity when they were deprived of the caffeine they’d normally have compared to afterwards, when they’d had their caffeine ‘fix.’ The research seemed to show that the brain coped better when the caffeine ‘users’ had had their coffee, rather than when they were deprived of it. This seems to fit with the complaints regularly heard from coffee drinkers, especially in my office, that they can’t function until they’ve had their first cup of the day (and I’m one of them!) So, maybe if you are a hardened coffee drinker, then coffee does help you to think?