How Caffeine Affects Your Brain
Here in the States, we just went through a major presidential election.
The last few weeks, and even DAYS, our TV, radio, mail, and telephone were swamped with negative (or positive) phone messages, flyers, commercials, and ads, aimed at pinpointing the weaknesses of the other opponent.
Now, this practice is common in politics.
You may already know that words sometimes have a negative, positive, or neutral tag associated with them.
But did you know that your brain processes them differently?
It’s pretty amazing to think about, real y!
But for those people who drink tea, coffee, or caffeinated beverages, you may have an ADVANTAGE over non-caffeine drinkers.
And, in a minute, I wil explain to you how you could enhance your brain's ability to process POSITIVE words over negative or neutral words - which could improve your performance doing certain tasks.
So sit back, grab a cup of your favorite caffeine-containing beverage, and prepare to be shocked.
Positive Words, Your Brain, and Caffeine
Our brain, which has a sophisticated system of interpreting and understand words - when they are spoken or read – may account for how you gauge your emotions when looking at a word or phrase.
In fact, studies have shown that your brain processes most words in your right visual area, which is mainly connected to the left hemisphere of your brain.
Now, researchers have shown that CAFFEINE may enhance how your brain processes positive- associated words over negative or even neutral words.
First, the researchers pointed out that positive words are processed much faster than negative or neutral words.
And, they showed that negative words are processed more slowly than even neutral words are.
But, here is where its gets INTERESTING!
The researchers showed that caffeine was able to enhance (or speed up) the recognition of positive words.
And that caffeine had NO effects on neutral or NEGATIVE words, when compared to control groups. They concluded:
“Because this effect was only present in the right-visual field/left-hemisphere condition, and based on the close link between caffeine intake and dopaminergic transmission, this result points to a dopaminergic explanation of the positivity
advantage in emotional word recognition.”
Simply stated, positive word processing was limited to the right visual field and left hemisphere of the brain. And since caffeine has been associated with increasing the amount of dopamine transmitted throughout the brain, the researchers believe that this may increase dopamine transmission in your brain, therefore increasing your ability to process positive words – faster and better. Caffeine and Positivity Positive and negative words hold emotional significance that may hinder or improve your task performance and potential completion. However, current research shows that your brain processes positive words much faster than neutral words. And, your brain processes negative words much slower than neutral words. This brand new study may show that if you include caffeine into your day, then you could be able to process positive words EVEN FASTER than people who do not have caffeine. So if you want to speed up the way your brain understands positive words, then include some caffeine into your day which could boost your overall brain power and word recognition.
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