Citation

Haller S, Rodriguez C, Moser D, Toma S, Hofmeister J, Sinanaj I, Ville DV, Giannakopoulos P, Lovblad KO. Neuroscience 2013; 250: 364-371.

Affiliation

Department of Imaging and Medical Informatics, University Hospitals of Geneva and Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Electronic address: sven.haller@hcuge.ch.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, International Brain Research Organization, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.neuroscience.2013.07.021

PMID

23876323

Abstract

In young individuals, caffeine-mediated blockade of adenosine receptors and vasoconstriction has direct repercussions on task-related activations, changes in functional connectivity, as well as global vascular effects. To date, no study has explored the effect of caffeine on brain activation patterns during highly demanding cognitive tasks in the elderly. This prospective, placebo-controlled crossover design comprises 24 healthy elderly individuals (mean age 68.8±4.0 years, 17 females) performing a 2-back working memory task in fMRI. Analyses include complimentary assessment of task-related activations (general linear model, GLM), functional connectivity (tensorial independent component analysis, TICA), and baseline perfusion (arterial spin labeling, ASL). Despite a reduction in whole-brain global perfusion (-22.7%), caffeine enhanced task-related GLM activation in a local and distributed network most pronounced in the bilateral striatum and to a lesser degree in the right middle and inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral insula, left superior and inferior parietal lobule as well as in the cerebellum bilaterally. TICA was significantly enhanced (+8.2%) in caffeine versus placebo in a distributed and task-relevant network including the pre-frontal cortex, the supplementary motor area, the ventral premotor cortex and the parietal cortex as well as the occipital cortex (visual stimuli) and basal ganglia. The inverse comparison of placebo versus caffeine had no significant difference. Activation strength of the task-relevant-network component correlated with response accuracy for caffeine yet not for placebo, indicating a selective cognitive effect of caffeine. The present findings suggest that acute caffeine intake enhances working memory-related brain activation as well as functional connectivity of BOLD fMRI in elderly individuals.

Language: en