What a nice feeling it is to wake up in the morning with the aroma of coffee. What's the reason behind the relaxing feeling when we wake up with the scent of coffee? Does the smell of coffee produce the same effect as when it is drunk, or otherwise?
In a collaborative research from Korea, Germany, and Japan conducted by Han-Seok Seo, Misato Hirano, Junko Shibato, Randeep Rakwal, In Kyeong Hwang, and Yoshinori Masuo (2008), they examined the effects of roasted coffee aroma on brain functioning, and its impacts on stress induced by sleep deprivation.
In order to examine these, they administer the roasted coffee aroma to male Wistar rats. These rats were divided into four conditions: control group, stress group, coffee group, and stress with coffee group. 24 hours sleep deprivation-induced stress pertains to the stress group. Exposure to roasted coffee aroma without sleep deprivation-induced stress is coffee group. Roasted coffee aroma-exposed group with sleep deprivation-induced stress refer to stress with coffee group. E-transcriptomics and proteomics approach were used to measure the differences in brain functioning among the rats in these four conditions.
Their study showed that 17 genes of the coffee were differently expressed in the control group. 13 genes were differently expressed between stress group and stress group with coffee in terms of expression level. Stress group has down-regulation, while stress group with coffee has up-regulation. Brains of sleep-deprived rats have reduced levels of mRNA for eleven genes that are important for brain functioning, while nine genes on stress with coffee group was restored to near and/or above normal levels for GIR and NFGR. In other words, roasted coffee bean aroma changes mRNA expression level of the rats' brain.
The researchers infer that these changes in mRNA, more specifically the gene reactivation effect, is a potential explanation of relaxing effect of coffee aroma.
Seo, H., Hirano, M., Shibato, J., Rakwal, R., Hwang, I., & Masuo, Y. (2008). Effects of Coffee Bean Aroma on the Rat Brain Stressed by Sleep Deprivation: A Selected Transcript- and 2D Gel-Based Proteome Analysis. Journal Of Agricultural And Food Chemistry, 56(12), 4665-4673. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/jf8001137
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