ArticleCommunications biology2025
Caffeine induces age-dependent increases in brain complexity and criticality during sleep.
Article in Communications biology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The Caffeinated Brain Part 1: The Effects of Caffeine on Event-Related Potentials (ERPs)-A Systematic and Mechanistic Review.Nutrients · 2026Pooled it
- The Caffeinated Brain Part 2: The Effect of Caffeine on Sleep-Related Electroencephalography (EEG)-A Systematic and Mechanistic Review.Nutrients · 2026Pooled it
- LSD reconfigures cortical dynamics through faster brain rhythms and increased fractal dimension.Communications biology · 2026Article
- The Application of an Ultra-Thin, High-Density μECoG Array in Dissecting Caffeine-Induced Cortical Dynamics in Mice.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Caffeine in Aging Brains: Cognitive Enhancement, Neurodegeneration, and Emerging Concerns About Addiction.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Review
- Caffeine induces age-dependent increases in brain complexity and criticality during sleep.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Meditation induces shifts in neural oscillations, brain complexity, and critical dynamics: novel insights from MEG.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Caffeine is the most widely consumed psychoactive stimulant worldwide. Yet important gaps persist in understanding its effects on the brain, especially during sleep. We analyzed sleep electroencephalography (EEG) in 40 subjects, contrasting 200 mg of caffeine against a placebo condition, utilizing inferential statistics and machine learning. We found that caffeine ingestion led to an increase in brain complexity, a widespread flattening of the power spectrum's 1/f-like slope, and a reduction in long-range temporal correlations. Being most prominent during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, these results suggest that caffeine shifts the brain towards a critical regime and more diverse neural dynamics. Interestingly, this was more pronounced in younger adults (20-27 years) compared to middle-aged participants (41-58 years) during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, while no significant age effects were observed during NREM. Interpreting these data in the light of modeling and empirical work on EEG-derived measures of excitation-inhibition balance suggests that caffeine promotes a shift in brain dynamics towards increased neural excitation and closer proximity to a critical regime, particularly during NREM sleep.
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.