The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
When you realize that most all of the research showing benefits of some compound on learning involve increasing (nor) epinephrine immediately AFTER the encoding (information exposure) step, you’ll rethink when to consume caffeine or stimulants in order to focus & learn better.
Every Sunday: the week’s new conflicts and verdict changes — and nothing else.
Native comments, Twitter mentions, and Reddit threads about this claim — surfaced together so the conversation isn't fragmented across platforms.
Bookmarking — the dossier-vs-overview split is the right call. Most of the time I want overview; sometimes I want receipts.
Would love a "what would change this verdict" RSS feed. Sign me up if it exists.
Of course you could use caffeine to prime the whole process by drinking the caffeine towards the tail of the learning episode, which is counter-intuitive at least to me.
For physical learning, it appears to be the opposite that if caffeine is in your practice or if you decide to try alpha GPC that you would want to do that before the training, take it before the training use it.
But a lot of these things like caffeine, or Alpha GPC can increase epinephrine and adrenaline or dopamine or other molecules in the brain and body that can enhance memory for a long period of time. So it makes sense to take it first, or even during learning, and then allow that increase to occur.
Now this really spits in the face of the way that most of us approach learning and memory. Most of us, if we use stimulants like caffeine or Alpha GPC, we're taking those before or during an attempt to learn, not afterwards. These results point to the fact that it is after the learning and memory that you really want to get that big increase in epinephrine and the related molecules that will tamp down memory.
if I abstain from caffeine while I'm trying to learn something-- but then I drink caffeine immediately after. Somewhat surprisingly to me but certainly in a way that's consistent with the research literature, memory for the information that I was focused on prior to ingesting that caffeine is much greater.
for mental for cognitive learning it makes sense to spike epinephrine to bump epinephrine levels up adrenaline levels up after cognitive learning for physical learning it appears to be the opposite that if you are if caffeine is in your practice or if you decide to try Alpha GPC that you would want to do that before the training
And typically, if I leveraged other forms of pharmarmacology in order to enhance learning and memory, things like alpha GPC or phosphotidal serereine, I would do that by taking those things before I sat down to learn a particular set of information or before I went off to learn a particular physical skill.