- Posted by Son Ton
- Sun, 02/19/2012 - 01:42
a little coffee musing!
As I sit here drinking a cup of americano made from the La Pavoni lever machine using a nicely roasted Rwanda coffee, I can not help but to reflect a little bit about this week. It has been an incrediblely busy week indeed with multiples assignment dued and a lot of time spent in the labratory; it had been often said that a graduate student literally lives in the lab and I did not believe that statement until now. With that kind of busy schedule, I have been less able to enjoy good coffee but fortunately tonight, I have sometime and make myself a nice cup!
As I have prominently posted the picture of the chemical structure of the molecule so dear to us coffee drinkers, that is caffeine. As someone here already said, when you are a coffee drinking enthusiast, you keep noticing things about coffee popping up everywhere. One of the place I have seen coffee related thing popping up this week is in one of my favorite graduate class, that is Neurochemistry.
I won't try to bore you with the nitty gritty of neurochemistry but quite intuitively, caffeine's chemical structure is very similar to a neurotransmitter made natively in our brain, that is adenosine.
As you can see, the structure of our friend caffeine is remarkably similar to a part of the native brain chemical, the adenosine. In our brain, one of of the function of adenosine is to regulate sleep/wake cycle specifically, it will decrease wakefullness; this is where our friend caffeine come to the rescue! Caffeine have an antagonistic effect on adenosine and cause us to be more wakeful!
So that is my little bit of musing about coffee and caffeine. Hopefully, that excellent cup of americano can do it's job and keep me awake as I really need to finish a reading assignment for monday!
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REVIEWS & COMMENTS
@WAKEKNOT
Son Ton | Sat, 03/03/2012 - 00:31I'm undecided right now. Most likely I will go to medical school after getting PhD in neuroscience.
COOL
Wakeknot | Wed, 02/22/2012 - 21:49It sounds like you are doing really interesting stuff. Are you aiming to be a professor or going some other direction?
VERY INTERESTING. I'VE
hoonchul | Mon, 02/20/2012 - 20:03Very interesting. I've always thought caffeine as stimulant but I guess it can cause wakefulness through another means.
JUST TO MAKE IT MORE FUN...
Chamie | Sun, 02/19/2012 - 11:11Just to make the comparison even more fun, here's ritalin, which used to be the drug of choice to treat "hyperactivity" in children in the 1970s -- all three of my brothers were prescribed caffeine in middle school back then.
DIFFERENCE IN EFFECT
avaserfi | Sun, 02/19/2012 - 10:01I've always wondered about the differences in effects on individuals. Caffeine doesn't really have much of an effect on me. I can drink a couple doubles and go to sleep an hour later, almost always. I've found most people would be bouncing off the walls at that point. Maybe I drink a little too much coffee!
WARNING: BAD CHEMISTRY JOKE...
jbviau | Sun, 02/19/2012 - 09:13True, but Adenosine seems more Christmas-y with all that "HO HO HO" going on. I warned you it was a bad joke! ;) Anyway, I wonder what triggers the body to produce more/less Adenosine (independent of caffeine intake)?
ITS PRETTYINTERESTING HOW
intrepid510 | Sun, 02/19/2012 - 02:28Its prettyinteresting how caffeine interacts with our body and I have heard that one before about how caffeine basically blocks the feeling of needing rest. Anyway good luck on your reading as it sounds like youmight need more than one cup to get through whatyouhave ahead of you!