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New study finds new uses for caffeine: improving memory

Published: 2026-05-16 Author: World Gafei

Last Updated: 2026/05/16, No matter what kind of habit, drinking caffeinated drinks is the first choice for millions of people to refresh themselves in the morning. But researchers at Johns Hopkins University have found a new use for caffeine: to improve memory.

Some people like to make a cup of tea, while others used to make a pot of coffee in the morning, while others like to drink carbonated drinks to refresh themselves when they wake up. No matter what kind of habit, drinking caffeinated drinks is the first choice for millions of people to refresh themselves in the morning. But researchers at Johns Hopkins University have found a new use for caffeine: to improve memory.

Michael Yassa, an assistant professor of psychology and brain science at Johns Hopkins University's Krieger School, and a team of scientists have found that caffeine improves long-term memory. Their findings, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, show that people can improve their memory for at least 24 hours after drinking coffee.

Yassa said: "it is well known that caffeine has cognitive effects, but scientists have not conducted detailed experiments on the effects of strengthening memory and preventing forgetting in humans.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University conducted a double-blind experiment in which participants who did not consume caffeine and those who took 200 milligrams of caffeine looked at a group of pictures five minutes later. Samples were taken 1 hour, 3 hours and 24 hours after caffeine intake, and saliva samples were compared.

The next day, the ability of the two groups of participants to identify pictures was tested. Some of the images in the experiment were the same as those of the previous day, others were different, and some of the pictures were similar. Most caffeinated participants were able to correctly identify similar images as previously seen, while non-caffeinated participants regarded them as the same.

The researchers say the brain's ability to distinguish between two similar things is called module separation, which reflects the brain's deeper memory.

"if we use standard recognition memory instead of these very similar images, we won't be able to find the effect of caffeine," Yassa explained. However, using these images, the brain requires more complex discrimination patterns-module separation to distinguish images, and caffeine seems to improve the function of this part of the brain in our experiments. "

The memory center in the human brain is located in the hippocampus-shaped hippocampus in the medial temporal lobe of the brain. The hippocampus is a switch between long-term memory and short-term memory. Most studies have shown that this part of the brain is affected, from concussions caused by sports to head injuries caused by war, and Alzheimer's caused by aging.

So far, it has not been proved that caffeine can affect the brain's long-term memory. After several trials, the common result is that caffeine has little or no effect on long-term memory retention.

The difference in this study was that participants took caffeine tablets as soon as they looked at the pictures and tried to memorize them.

According to the US Food and Drug Administration, 90% of the world's people consume caffeine in some way. 80% of adults in the United States consume caffeine every day. Adults consume an average of 200mg, the same dose used in the Yassa trial, about two cups of coffee or one cup of espresso a day.

"next we will continue to study the brain's potential memory improvement mechanism," Yassa said. We can use brain imaging technology to solve these problems, and we will also study the relationship between caffeine and disease. "

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