A Red-Letter Day for Coffee Drinkers--Consolidate Your Memory and Hydrate with Coffee

January 13, 2014 was a red-letter day for coffee drinkers! Two major health-related stories were widely reported, starting with news (published in Nature Neuroscience ) that caffeine enhances “memory consolidation.” Although there have been lots of studies showing that coffee is a cognitive enhancer, there has never been a study in which study participants were asked to memorize something without the benefit of coffee, take caffeine after the memorization activity--- and then perform at a later date….until now. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University got 160 people between the ages of 18 and 30 to look at pictures of various things (ducks, etcetera) and to identify them as either “indoor” or “outdoor” objects. Shortly after this task, the participants received either a placebo tablet or a 200-mg caffeine pill. Then they left. 24 hours later, everyone was back at the study site looking at the same pictures. The goal was to determine whether the pictures were old, new