Coffee is the best drink ever, but how do we get it to taste as good as it smells?
Move to Italy or Australia.
Coffee drinkers display a distinct pattern of brain functional connectivity
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Re: Coffee drinkers display a distinct pattern of brain functional connectivity
#32Can someone translate this to lay terms?
Well, I’m not really qualified, but reading the abstract, they took a bunch of pictures of the brains of a small group of people, did some stats analysis where it is all linked, and the pictures seem to suggest that the CD group might feel less, be worse at processing whatever it is they do feel and suck more at moving parts of their body compared to the NCD group because all the feely parts and some of the movey-limb parts have fewer functional connections. Anxiety might be higher, especially if they’re male.
I’ve been drinking coffee since I was 4 years old, so that would suck and maybe explain why I can’t do sports so good.
Not all bad news, the CD group might have more functional connections between the seeing parts of the brain and the movey parts.
Just going to quote this last part, seems like plain enough English:
“In conclusion, higher consumption of coffee and caffeinated products has an impact in brain functional connectivity at rest with implications in emotionality, alertness, and readiness to action.”
So, if you drink a lot of coffee, for like a long time, your fight or flight instincts are probably cranked too high.
I think they probably also want more grant money so that they can take more brain pictures which honestly seems like a cool gig.
Re: Coffee drinkers display a distinct pattern of brain functional connectivity
#33Can someone translate this to lay terms?
I think it's not surprising. I think for any psychoactive compound you are going to have some profile of brain activity that's triggered by that psychoactive. And it's also the nature of brain connectivity that if you repeatedly trigger a certain pattern of activity you will reinforce the corresponding connectivity. In other words each psychoactive triggers a particular circuit and the way the brain responds to triggering a circuit is by strengthening it. So using different psychoactives will strengthen different circuits in your brain and each psychoactive will have its own characteristic circuit, that gets strengthened the more you use it. In that sense it's really just like any other repeated activity. If you want to be cute you can consider psychoactives as some sort of exercise for your brain.
On the other side of that you can think of it as if you're focusing your brain activity on some particular circuits then other circuits will probably not be getting the same amount of balance detention but you would normally give them without the psychoactive. As a consequence of that their connectivity will decrease.
The study states that (at least from the abstract) coffee drinkers have lower connectivity in regions associated with sense impressions (smell, taste, touch, etc), emotional and memory processing and the unconscious. And higher connectivity in regions associated with visual processing and motor skills. I think this is not exactly straightforward to translate from that to what it actually means for a person's experience, because the connection between brain and personal experience is complex. But the way I interpreted it is if you drink a lot of coffee you probably going to spend more time twitching your body and intently watching your surroundings than you are ruminating about emotions and memories and various sense impressions. Based on the subjective effects of cofger that people report and how you can observe the behavior people drinking coffee, probably not a bad interpretation: big eyed like a lemur or tarsier and restlessly leaping all about the place, like a monkey...or doing the mental equivalent settled in their chair glued to their laptop.
but I suppose the crucial part of all this is that the connectivity affects do not just persist while the compound is in your bloodstream like the arousal effects do. the connectivity is like the tracks that the river carved out by flowing a particular way, so if you drink a lot of coffee I think what the study's saying is you're probably likely to spend more time focused on the outer world than you are on the inner experience and the connection to emotions, energies and so on.
As a another thing to all that: at the same time laying down circuits, or strengthening the existing ones, through repeated use is not the only thing that a psychoactive does. They have other effects, like he arousal effects of having caffeine in your blood, and side effects, and more. But even if carving out brain circuits was the only thing that psychoactives did, there might be some circuits your don't want to strengthen (like mice getting addicted to cocaine by strengthening its dopamine reward circuit, by pressing the lever repeatedly).
Re: Coffee drinkers display a distinct pattern of brain functional connectivity
#34I don’t see this in any of the comments but looks like coffee is associated with higher levels of anxiety in males. I skimmed the part about Alzheimer’s and dementia but I think I parsed it as it may help prevent it?
Re: Coffee drinkers display a distinct pattern of brain functional connectivity
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's terrible coffee out there. In my opinion (you may differ) Peet's black coffee tastes like burning and I regret it every time, usually in aeroport terminals (I always drink black so I often forget to order Peet's cut with adulterants like dairy). Tastes are different; I hate really expensive trad whiskeys (Islay, Oban) because there's something in there that tastes to me like the smell of plastic shrinkwrap ar…
Where do you live? If you are in NYC I can recommend a few places to try that will change your mind about coffee.
I used to think there was no way the coffee out in the west coast could be substantially better than what we have in NYC.
Then I went to Seattle and SF in the same month, and discovered how wrong I was. Those places may be pits right now just like NYC, but they definitely win in the coffee department.
Re: Coffee drinkers display a distinct pattern of brain functional connectivity
#36Coffee is the best drink ever, but how do we get it to taste as good as it smells?
YMMV but I find freshly ground, bloomed for 30s before brewing, and 85C aeropress (inverted method) for 90s is my go-to for getting it to taste exactly how I like it. I thoroughly recommend playing around and experimenting to find your own routine, very cathartic.
Inverted became inferior to me once I found out how to create negative pressure with the plunger on top of a cup. Same taste and process but without the flip.
Re: Coffee drinkers display a distinct pattern of brain functional connectivity
#37Coffee is the best drink ever, but how do we get it to taste as good as it smells?
If you're genuinely curious, James Hoffman on YouTube is the coffee wizard. All his videos are interesting, even if you couldn't care less about coffee!
Seconded, though beware the upgrade-itis from watching too much of it...
Re: Coffee drinkers display a distinct pattern of brain functional connectivity
#38When the pandemic started a year ago, I laid in a supply of coffee. The supply chain for that is very long, and I'd miss it terribly! I expected coffee shortages at the supermarket, but weirdly everyone else was buying yeast and toilet paper. Couldn't buy yeast for like 6 months. The coffee supply was unaffected, for which I am grateful!
Well covid wouldn’t be expected to increase coffee consumption so the supply was ok. As someone into baking before all this- the amount of 5lb flour sacks and tiny yeast packets for $1.50 is there only
to satisfy only frivolous occasional bakers. How do I know? Because it you were serious about baking you would buy this yeast and flour for pennies on the dollar in bulk at somewhere like Costco.
Re: Coffee drinkers display a distinct pattern of brain functional connectivity
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
By doing absolutely nothing. Drinking and enjoying black coffee is like whiskey, it takes a few times to get past the “ why the hell would anyone?! ” hump, but once you do, you never look back.
There's terrible coffee out there. In my opinion (you may differ) Peet's black coffee tastes like burning and I regret it every time, usually in aeroport terminals (I always drink black so I often forget to order Peet's cut with adulterants like dairy). Tastes are different; I hate really expensive trad whiskeys (Islay, Oban) because there's something in there that tastes to me like the smell of plastic shrinkwrap ar…
Peet’s coffee is, IMHO, better than most generic supermarket coffee but it’s not one you’d find in my cupboard. I prefer a lighter roast, usually with a pour over. Mayorga has a seasonal Rio Coco that is a good all around roast.
Regarding whiskey, getting to the stage of sipping on anything Islay takes a while, but there’s a whole lifetime to get there. Along the way there’s plenty of more approachable single malts, rye whiskeys, bourbons, and so much more.