The experimental results show that drinking coffee after study can enhance memory.

Participants were asked to identify outdoor or indoor image targets and take caffeine or placebo pills five minutes later. The researchers took saliva samples from participants in advance to analyze their caffeine levels and then repeated the test three and 24 hours later. The next day, they showed participants some images, including the same, similar and randomly selected images as before.

Participants in both groups accurately identified new and old photos, but participants who took caffeine pills were better able to find similar images. The researchers pointed out that participants who took placebo pills mistakenly thought they were the original images of the day before, suggesting that caffeine can improve some memories at least 24 hours after drinking coffee. The findings were published in the journal Nature Neurology.

"caffeine helps strengthen long-term memory," said Dr. Michael Asa of the University of California, Irvine. We have always known that caffeine enhances cognitive ability, but we have never studied in detail its effect on memory enhancement and its resistance to forgetting in humans. Our research shows for the first time that caffeine has a special effect on reducing amnesia after more than 24 hours. "

The brain's ability to recognize differences between two similar objects means a higher level of memory retention, the researchers say. "if we use standard cognitive memory tasks that do not have similar image goals, we will find that caffeine has no effect," Asa said. But if you use image targets that are more difficult for the brain to recognize, caffeine seems to improve memory. " The study is different from the earliest experiments that showed that caffeine had little or no effect on long-term memory because participants who looked at the images managed to remember the images after drinking coffee.

"almost all previous studies have linked coffee drinking before classes to memory enhancement, but it is not clear whether caffeine has an effect on attention, alertness, attention or other factors," Asa said. By analyzing caffeine in experiments, we rule out these effects and prove that it enhances memory or is not helpful to memory. " Studies have shown that taking fewer doses of caffeine an hour before looking at the image does not improve memory.