How Caffeine Affects People's Cognitive Abilities (Essay Sample)

Effects of Caffeine on Cognitive Functions
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Effects of Caffeine on Cognitive Functions
Foods and the nutrients they contain can have subtle effects on the mood and mental performance of an individual. Caffeine is one of the well-known stimulants whose consumption is believed to improve memory, alertness, and the overall mood of a person (Borota et al., 2014). Caffeine helps in the blockage of the adenosine receptors which leads to improved cognitive capabilities as indicted by improved vigilance, attention, and working memory.
Caffeine is mostly consumed in the form of coffee but the product is found in other foods products as well. Debates on the benefits and detriments of caffeine have been around for a long time leading to the conduction of different types of research to determine the nutrients value to the human body. When taken at the right time and in favorable amounts (low dose) caffeine can help in improving a person’s mood, vigilance, attention, and working memory (McLellan, Cadwell & Lieberman, 2016). A 60-400mg coffee dose enhances the attention and vigilance of a person by increasing the response speed to actions, information processing, as well as the capacity of one to switch tasks. Coffee enhances both focused and choice attention thus indicating the positive benefits of caffeine on cognitive functions. Vigilance is also an aspect of cognitive performance that is closely related to attention. Research shows that caffeine improves a person’s ability to carry out lengthy and tedious activities without issues such as reduced alertness and attention (Borota et al., 2014). The improved hedonic tone and reduced anxiety levels in a person associated with caffeine enhance the cognition of the individual.
Caffeine presents positive performance effects in learning and memory tasks. Taking coffee before or during a task can help an individual remember different aspects of the activity with ease especially if it is a difficult and tedious assignment that requires high levels of concentration. In a fatigued individual or a person deprived of sleep, caffeine advances the arousal level of the beverage user to the middle range of the Yerkes-Dodson curve which enhances performance (McLellan et al., 2016). Additionally, since coffee is highly related to improved attention and vigilance in people, the use of the products leads to heightened verbal reasoning and recall capabilities of the user. Individuals remember and differentiate varied types of data better after ingesting caffeine. Similarly, the administration of caffeine products improves the encoding abilities and information retention of an individual thus promoting cognitive performance. Caffeine is also associated with chronic effects on the cognitive abilities of a person as indicated by boosted visuospatial reasoning as well as the prevention of cognitive disorders such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (Borota et al., 2016).
Arguments that coffee and caffeine products have hazardous effects on the cognition of a reason have been presented. Proponents of this notion argue that caffeine leads to high levels of nervousness and jitteriness which could be counter-productive for the beverage user (McLel