ArticleSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2012
Storm in a coffee cup: caffeine modifies brain activation to social signals of threat.
Article in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 61 citations in OpenAlex.
- Mapping the pharmacological modulation of brain oxygen metabolism: The effects of caffeine on absolute CMRONeuroImage · 2017Trial
- Exploring the Impact and Mechanisms of Coffee and Its Active Ingredients on Depression, Anxiety, and Sleep Disorders.Nutrients · 2025Review
- Comprehensive machine learning assessment of zebrafish behaviour and biochemical markers in response to caffeine exposure.Ecotoxicology (London, England) · 2025Article
- The Periaqueductal Gray and Its Extended Participation in Drug Addiction Phenomena.Neuroscience bulletin · 2021Review
- Review
- Effects of Acute Drug Administration on Emotion: A Review of Pharmacological MRI Studies.Current addiction reports · 2021Article
- Nutrition as Metabolic Treatment for Anxiety.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Article
- Proximal threats promote enhanced acquisition and persistence of reactive fear-learning circuits.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Oxidative Stress Mediates Anxiety-Like Behavior Induced by High Caffeine Intake in Zebrafish: Protective Effect of Alpha-Tocopherol.Oxidative medicine and cellular longevity · 2019Article
- Taste Perception and Caffeine Consumption: An fMRI Study.Nutrients · 2018Article
- Eating for 3.8 × 10Frontiers in endocrinology · 2018Review
- Subgenual Cingulum Microstructure Supports Control of Emotional Conflict.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2016Article
- Eat to Beat Stress.American journal of lifestyle medicineArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Caffeine, an adenosine A₁ and A(2A) receptor antagonist, is the most popular psychostimulant drug in the world, but it is also anxiogenic. The neural correlates of caffeine-induced anxiety are currently unknown. This study investigated the effects of caffeine on brain regions implicated in social threat processing and anxiety. Participants were 14 healthy male non/infrequent caffeine consumers. In a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover design, they underwent blood oxygenation level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while performing an emotional face processing task 1 h after receiving caffeine (250 mg) or placebo in two fMRI sessions (counterbalanced, 1-week washout). They rated anxiety and mental alertness, and their blood pressure was measured, before and 2 h after treatment. Results showed that caffeine induced threat-related (angry/fearful faces > happy faces) midbrain-periaqueductal gray activation and abolished threat-related medial prefrontal cortex wall activation. Effects of caffeine on extent of threat-related amygdala activation correlated negatively with level of dietary caffeine intake. In concurrence with these changes in threat-related brain activation, caffeine increased self-rated anxiety and diastolic blood pressure. Caffeine did not affect primary visual cortex activation. These results are the first to demonstrate potential neural correlates of the anxiogenic effect of caffeine, and they implicate the amygdala as a key site for caffeine tolerance.
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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.