Coffee and caffeine: Impact on mood, cognition, and physical activity

Coffee and caffeinated products have a remarkable potential to beneficially influence different psychomotor variables. The main neuropharmacological mechanisms underlying caffeine’s psychostimulant action involve an antagonist role on the adenosine receptor, which enables an increase of brain catecholamine levels. These mechanisms also encompass dependence and withdrawal effects. Concerning the impact on mood, caffeine increases attention, alertness, hedonic tone, vigor, and motivation, whereas it decreases apathy, irritability, anxiety, and tiredness. The effects on cognition are featured by a positive influence on low-order cognitive functions such as processing speed (reaction times) or prolonged vigilance, whereas the ones on higher-order cognitive functions such as planning, conceptualizing, managing, and working memory are still under debate although with positive promises. Caffeine exerts also clear positive effects on physical activity, where it provides an ergogenic gain for endurance exercise and to a lesser degree also for short intense exercise. Dose dependence of the effects as well as the influence of contextual and subjective variables on caffeine’s psychomotor effects is discussed.