Brain Hacking with Caffeine

A few weeks ago I went to a meetup for coders and someone there said that caffeine actually programs your brain. Curious to know what he meant, I did some refreshing on my brain knowledge and came up with the following suggestion:

In your brain is are chemicals called neurotransmitters. These are transferred between the cells (called neurons) of your brain to communicate messages. There are two key neurotransmitters that caffeine affects. The first of these is called dopamine. Dopamine is released into your brain to communicate the feeling of pleasure and it is needed for motor functions. Essentially, it reinforces us to continue doing whatever we are doing. When dopamine is released, it floats around in the space between neurons (called synapses) until it locks into dopamine receptors of neurons. When this chemical latches to a receptor, we get a nice happy feeling.

Illustration of a synapse between neurons.

When all of the dopamine receptors have been filled, enzymes are released to clean up the remaining dopamine that's floating around. After all, a healthy brain is a tidy one! Caffeine slows down this process so the extra dopamine hangs around longer. During that extra time the dopamine floats around, you feel more uplifted. However, when there is too much dopamine hanging about, you end up with uncontrollable movements which could explain the jittering people do when they're high on caffeine. Since dopamine levels control muscle movement, higher dopamine can also lead to a higher pulse.

The other neurotransmitter affected by caffeine is adenosine. This neat little brain chemical is responsible for helping us sleep. When adeonsine is released into the brain, it binds to adenosine receptors, much like dopamine. When this neurotransmitter finds a neuron slot to bind to, it makes us feel drowsy by slowing that neuron's activity. It just so happens that caffeine looks like adenosine to the brain, so it takes adenosine's seat in the neuron by binding to its receptor instead. Caffeine doesn't slow down the neuron so the effects of the sleep-inducing adenosine are staved off - if only temporarily.

So you can see where one might get the idea that caffeine programs your brain. Personally, I'd call it hacking.