Smelling Coffee Changes Your Brain

Posted by Chris Jensen | Jun. 16, 2008 07:43AM PST | 634 views | 0 comments

FILED UNDER: News. Science.

Love the smell of coffee? Most do, even if they don't like drinking the substance that has powered a billion Internet blogs, this one included. According to scientists reporting in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the scent of coffee has a surprising effect on rats that may mimic the effect in humans.

Researchers found that sleep-deprived rats exposed to the aroma of coffee beans displayed 13 genetic differences, including antioxidant activity that protects nerve cells from stress-related damage, protein fate, cell rescue, defense, virulence, cell communication and energy metabolism.

To sum up:

In conclusion, the roasted coffee bean aroma changes the mRNA and protein expression levels of the rat brain, providing for the first time clues to the potential antioxidant or stress relaxation activities of the coffee bean aroma.

(Source: ACS Publications)

Tags rats, research, caffeine, coffee