Green Tea, is it all its cracked up to be?

[Ming Loyalist]

Last I checked, neurology and neurochemistry were still very much black-box fields on the macro scale.

it's getting better, we're seeing a lot of really interesting stuff with functional MRI imaging that is allowing us to understand a great deal about the brain (i work in an fMRI lab at an ivy league uni, so brain research is actually my "scene" as it were.)

for instance, there was a recent court case that set a precedent for fMRI results to be used to determine if someone claiming chronic pain is actually experiencing the pain in question. this is huge news for our lab, and huge news for lawyers, etc.

we're getting WAY off topic, i know, but that talk of green tea (or an ingredient therein) having an impact on learning is quite interesting. i may bounce the idea of testing that theory off a couple of the younger researchers who are looking for experiments to run. i'm not sure if we can gauge alpha and beta waves with fMRI (i'm the systems admin there) but it sounds like the kind of thing we would get into.

[TheRuss]

we're getting WAY off topic, i know, but that talk of green tea (or an ingredient therein) having an impact on learning is quite interesting. i may bounce the idea of testing that theory off a couple of the younger researchers who are looking for experiments to run. i'm not sure if we can gauge alpha and beta waves with fMRI (i'm the systems admin there) but it sounds like the kind of thing we would get into.

According to Wikipedia, alpha waves occur at a frequency of about 8 to 14 Hz... not sure if y'all have a fMRI that can run above 28 Hz (Nyquist theorem at work) to observe the peak/trough of the wave in action. You'd still have some options without that, though - specifically, you could look at the time-averaged effects of alpha wave activity.

Another complication: currently, to detect alpha wave activity, you'd use an EEG - can you use EEG and fMRI at the same time? My guess would be "probably not", but I could be wrong. In absence of that option, though... if you could reliably establish a given alpha-wave response based on certain stimuli, you could roughly quantify it with an EEG, then apply the same stimuli while performing a fMRI. It'd be imprecise, but it might work.

I suppose the question would be where exactly one would go with it if one did find a correlation between time-averaged alpha wave activity and fMRI activity. I guess that's up to the researchers.

[Point_Blank]

we're getting WAY off topic, i know, but that talk of green tea (or an ingredient therein) having an impact on learning is quite interesting. i may bounce the idea of testing that theory off a couple of the younger researchers who are looking for experiments to run. i'm not sure if we can gauge alpha and beta waves with fMRI (i'm the systems admin there) but it sounds like the kind of thing we would get into.

I agree it would be an interesting study to say the least -

I did not intend to pull us off topic - I merely meant to give some credence to the idea that if green tea contained ingredient that enhanced the functioning of the brain it would stand to reason that a better functioning brain would increase the chances of increasing ones over all performance.

To dismiss green teas potential physical benefits based solely upon the notion that it only has "psychoactive properties" is to over look the importance of the brain in regards to physical performance -

Only creatures that move have brains according to logic as I understand it movement and thinking must therefore be connected

Apologies if my posting was disruptive I merely meant to make a connection between the brain and body I felt was being over looked in the discussion /evaluation of green tea's performance enhancing effects .