Trial reportBehavioural brain research2008
Comparing the benefits of caffeine, naps and placebo on verbal, motor and perceptual memory.
Trial report in Behavioural brain research, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to 3 registered trials, which are not on this map. Cited by 39 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Impact of Transcranial Slow Oscillating Stimulation on Memory Consolidation During Slow Wave Sleep of a Daytime Nap in Patients With Mild Cognitive Impairment(MCI)
Impact of Transcranial Slow Oscillating Stimulation on Memory Consolidation During Slow Wave Sleep in Older Adults
Impact of Transcranial Slow Oscillating Stimulation on Memory Consolidation During Daytime Slow Wave Sleep in Younger, Healthy Subjects
Who cites it
39 citing papers in PubMed, 125 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effects of energy drinks on repeated sprint performance and cognitive function in athletes.Frontiers in physiology · 2026Trial
- Trait Energy and Fatigue Modify the Effects of Caffeine on Mood, Cognitive and Fine-Motor Task Performance: A Post-Hoc Study.Nutrients · 2021Trial
- Trial
- Procedural performance following sleep deprivation remains impaired despite extended practice and an afternoon nap.Scientific reports · 2016Trial
- No Enhancement of 24-Hour Visuomotor Skill Retention by Post-Practice Caffeine Administration.PloS one · 2015Trial
- Heart rate variability and cognitive function following a multi-vitamin and mineral supplementation with added guarana (Paullinia cupana).Nutrients · 2014Trial
- Daytime sleep accelerates cardiovascular recovery after psychological stress.International journal of behavioral medicine · 2012Trial
- Article
- Caffeine Consumption Patterns, Health Impacts, and Media Influence: A Narrative Review.Cureus · 2025Review
- Alteration of intracerebral metabolites and subjective sleepiness by acute caffeine administration in adults.Quantitative imaging in medicine and surgery · 2023Article
- Multiple timescales of learning indicated by changes in evidence-accumulation processes during perceptual decision-making.NPJ science of learning · 2023Article
- Progressive muscle relaxation increases slow-wave sleep during a daytime nap.Journal of sleep research · 2022Article
- Prior Exposure and Toddlers' Sleep-Related Memory for Novel Words.Brain sciences · 2021Article
- Experimental study of pre- and postnatal caffeine exposure and its observable effects on selected neurotransmitters and behavioural attributes at puberty : Caffeine exposure and its observable effects on selected neurotranmitters and behaviour.Metabolic brain disease · 2021Article
- Description of a Multi-faceted COVID-19 Pandemic Physician Workforce Plan at a Multi-site Academic Health System.Journal of general internal medicine · 2021Article
- Role of Napping for Learning across the Lifespan.Current sleep medicine reports · 2020Article
- Hacking the Brain: Dimensions of Cognitive Enhancement.ACS chemical neuroscience · 2019Review
- The Concept of Qailulah (Midday Napping) from Neuroscientific and Islamic Perspectives.Journal of religion and health · 2018Review
- Motor Performance Is not Enhanced by Daytime Naps in Older Adults.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2016Article
- REM sleep rescues learning from interference.Neurobiology of learning and memory · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Caffeine, the world's most common psychoactive substance, is used by approximately 90% of North Americans everyday. Little is known, however, about its benefits for memory. Napping has been shown to increase alertness and promote learning on some memory tasks. We directly compared caffeine (200mg) with napping (60-90min) and placebo on three distinct memory processes: declarative verbal memory, procedural motor skills, and perceptual learning. In the verbal task, recall and recognition for unassociated words were tested after a 7h retention period (with a between-session nap or drug intervention). A second, different, word list was administered post-intervention and memory was tested after a 20min retention period. The non-declarative tasks (finger tapping task (FTT) and texture discrimination task (TDT)) were trained before the intervention and then retested afterwards. Naps enhanced recall of words after a 7h and 20min retention interval relative to both caffeine and placebo. Caffeine significantly impaired motor learning compared to placebo and naps. Napping produced robust perceptual learning compared with placebo; however, naps and caffeine were not significantly different. These findings provide evidence of the limited benefits of caffeine for memory improvement compared with napping. We hypothesize that impairment from caffeine may be restricted to tasks that contain explicit information; whereas strictly implicit learning is less compromised.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.