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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

#91

"It is important to note, however, that causality cannot be inferred from our study design."

Observational studies are still useful, even if they can’t prove causation. A study like this can open new question into how coffee effects the brain.

or why some people's brains like coffee

Re: Coffee drinkers display a distinct pattern of brain functional connectivity

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

care to elaborate? isn't the whole point that water escapes before you manage to put the plunger in place?

or do you mean that you've gotten fast at putting the plunger on, and then leave it there for a bit before pushing it down? (in which case, do you skip the stirrer step?)

Re: Coffee drinkers display a distinct pattern of brain functional connectivity

#93
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it does take some time to learn the appreciation - like spicy foods. Drinking it black means you taste the full flavour without the bitterness being masked by milk or sugar. But for me personally, drinking esspresso without milk is only good if the beans are excellent, and brewed to perfection by a proper barista (a level of skill i have yet to truly attain - that's why i buy my esspresso instead of making it myself)…

I'm generally (and a little counterintuitively) against improving the quality of things I try. I noticed that the hedonic treadmill makes it so that my level of enjoyment is the same as the lower-quality thing, it just makes it so I can't go back. For example, I used to have these shitty speakers, but I'd enjoy music very much all the same. Then, I got great speakers, and could hear all the nuances, but I enjoyed mus…

hahah, that's a nice philosophy.

thanks for "expounding" it :p

Re: Coffee drinkers display a distinct pattern of brain functional connectivity

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm generally (and a little counterintuitively) against improving the quality of things I try. I noticed that the hedonic treadmill makes it so that my level of enjoyment is the same as the lower-quality thing, it just makes it so I can't go back. For example, I used to have these shitty speakers, but I'd enjoy music very much all the same. Then, I got great speakers, and could hear all the nuances, but I enjoyed mus…

hahah, that's a nice philosophy. thanks for "expounding" it :p

Haha, you're very welcome!

Re: Coffee drinkers display a distinct pattern of brain functional connectivity

#95

Coffee is the best drink ever, but how do we get it to taste as good as it smells?

On the cheap, a french press. More expensive, espresso (and that whole rabbit hole).

For my taste, there is moka pot between espresso machine and a french press.

Re: Coffee drinkers display a distinct pattern of brain functional connectivity

#96
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. Suppose, for simplicity, that we have equal number N of coffee drinkers and non coffee drinkers, for total of 2N. Suppose you try your model on them, and tell which is which based on their MRI 80% of the time. Let’s assume the null hypothesis is that you model doesn’t work, and you just were randomly lucky. If N = 5, that’s 8 successes in 10 Bernoulli trials, that’s already p value of 0.01. With N=25…

Your math is whack. 8/10 coin flips being a 1% chance?

The commenter isn't saying that there's a 1% chance of getting 8/10 coin flips. One way that we can test whether a procedure is better than random chance is to use a binomial test. This helps understand whether a proposed rate of success is feasible or not, assuming that every attempt has equal probability. Here, success would be that the procedure distinguishes between coffee and non-coffee drinkers using an MRI. To evaluate "better than random chance" (vs "different than random chance"), we can use the binomial test to understand the probability that the rate of success is greater than 50%.

In R, we can do this with: binom.test(8, 10, p=0.50, alternative="greater") which returns a p-value of 0.05469 and a 95% confidence interval of 0.4930987, 1 [see note below]. This doesn't meet the traditional threshold of 95% confidence, which (in a simplified way) says that we're ok with a 5% chance of a false positive if we repeated this testing procedure many times. So yes, this isn't a p-value of 1%.

If we expand this to 20/25 successes, we have a lot more evidence. The p-value shrinks to 0.002039 and a 95% CI becomes 0.6245949, 1 [see note below]. So we're almost certain that the procedure has a success rate greater than 0.5, but without going deeply into the confusing aspects of how to correctly interpret confidence intervals and instead interpreting them as they are generally used, anywhere from 62% to 100% is reasonable if we're ok with a 5% false positive rate, which is still a wide range (the width is what I'd say is important, ignoring the way people use CIs in practice).

Another way to do this would be to get a p-value as to how feasible a less-than 80% success rate is for 20/25 successes. That has a p-value of 0.5793, which isn't significant at any commonly used level.

In the end, you'd probably use something more sophisticated than a binomial test so that you can account / control for other factors, but hopefully this illustrates what you can do with small sample sizes.

Math details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_test#Usage

Note: The upper range is always 1 because of details around calculating a one-sided binomial confidence interval (we're doing "greater than" rather than "different than").

Re: Coffee drinkers display a distinct pattern of brain functional connectivity

#98
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copious amounts of sugar and fat seem to work for most people. That said, yes, I would love to know how to make it more palatable without making it so unhealthy. I'm extremely sensitive to bitter flavors, black coffee is a lost cause for me.

> I'm extremely sensitive to bitter flavors, black coffee is a lost cause for me. Perhaps coffee just isn't for you? The bitterness is part of what is enjoyable. Tea is probably more your thing.

try high altitude grown coffees from East Africa, usually little to no bitterness

Re: Coffee drinkers display a distinct pattern of brain functional connectivity

#99

Coffee is the best drink ever, but how do we get it to taste as good as it smells?

French press and proper technique (temperature, time and grind).

coarse ground coffee 60g/1 L of water 4:00 min steep stir the crust wait 30 seconds plunge enjoy coffee

Re: Coffee drinkers display a distinct pattern of brain functional connectivity

#100
Aside:

I gave up caffeine during quarantine. My anxiety is down and my sleep is much better. I know this isn't for everyone. But if you're having issues with anxiety or sleep, my anecdata says that caffeine may be the culprit. The first three days of headaches were pretty bad though, so be warned.

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