Caffeine reinforces flavour preference in caffeine-dependent, but not long-term withdrawn, caffeine consumers

Abstract

These data suggest that the ability of caffeine to reinforce changes in flavour liking are driven by the alleviation of withdrawal symptoms among habitual caffeine consumers and provide further support for the negative reinforcement theory.

A critical review of caffeine withdrawal: empirical validation of symptoms and signs, incidence, severity, and associated features

“…Numerous studies have shown that caffeine-withdrawal symptoms typically emerge 12-24 h after abrupt caffeine abstinence (Driesbach and Pfeiffer 1943;Goldstein 1964;Griffiths et al 1986Griffiths et al , 1990Richardson et al 1995;Schuh and Griffiths 1997;Swerdlow et al 2000;Tinley et al 2003), which is consistent with the short half-life of caffeine (4-6 h). Some evidence suggests that symptoms may emerge later (>24 h) after abstinence from higher doses (e.g., 900 mg/day) of caffeine (Bruce et al 1991;Evans and Griffiths 1992).…”

“…Studies have also shown that abstinenceinduced headache is time-limited (Table 4) and is rapidly (usually within 30-60 min) and often completely reversed after re-administration of caffeine (Driesbach and Pfeiffer 1943;Roller 1981;Couturier et al 1997;Tinley et al 2003), with the magnitude of reversal being an increasing function of the re-administered caffeine dose . Studies have also shown that the severity and incidence of headache after abstinence were increasing functions of caffeine maintenance dose (Goldstein 1964;Silverman et al 1992;Evans and Griffiths 1999) and duration of caffeine dosing (Evans and Griffiths 1999) before abstinence.…”

“…Two studies from other laboratories also used instructions and methods that reduced the likelihood of expectancy effects (Comer et al 1997;Dews et al 1999). Finally, several studies ruled out expectancy effects by using debriefing procedures to explicitly determine what subjects understood or inferred about the experimental conditions (van Dusseldorp and Katan 1990; Rogers et al 1995;James 1998;Robelin and Rogers 1998;Yeomans et al 1998Yeomans et al , 2002bTinley et al 2003). From these studies in which expectancy effects are judged to be unlikely, the median incidence of headache (derived from column 7 of Table 4) for the studies that reported such data is 42%, which is similar to the incidence of headache for all blind studies (45%).…”

“…Rogers et al (2003) After abstinence, caffeine consumers were less alert than non-consumers 42. Tinley et al (2003) e N=45 caffeine consumers (mean 324 mg/day); within subjects and across groups design; for 2-weeks subjects abstained from their normal sources of caffeine and consumed tea and coffee provided by the experimenters; in one group the tea and coffee were caffeinated and in the other group they were caffeine free; subjects abstained from tea and coffee overnight before each of four test sessions conducted over the 2-week period; subjects reported mood before and after receiving a single serving of either a caffeine beverage (caffeine maintained group) or caffeine-free beverage (caffeine-free group); abstinence was biologically verified…”

Caffeine, sleep and wakefulness: implications of new understanding about withdrawal reversal

“…Importantly, recent studies yielded no evidence of caffeine having net beneficial effects on performance or mood under conditions of sustained caffeine use versus sustained abstinence (James, 1998;James and Gregg, 2004b;. Other studies performing similar comparisons have reported similar results in relation to performance and mood in adults (Garrett and Griffiths, 1998;Judelson et al, 2005;Richardson et al, 1995;Rogers and Dernoncourt, 1998;Rogers et al, 2005), children (Heatherley et al, 2006) and in relation to caffeine reinforcement (Garrett and Griffiths, 1998;Tinley et al, 2003).…”