The second finding isn't very recent or reliable (it's in vitro); I assume it's the same as http://www.rense.com/politics5/caff.htm http://www.rense.com/politic

The second finding isn't very recent or reliable (it's in vitro); I assume it's the same as http://www.rense.com/politics5/caff.htm http://www.rense.com/politics5/caff.htm. Live rat studies find that caffeine reduces hippocampal neurogenesis - e.g. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17400186 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17400186 - which is apparently either a cause or effect of certain types of learning (they actually measure performance on various learning-dependent tasks). Unfortunately I don't understand precisely what kinds of learning are dependent on the observed growth in the hippocampus (this article: http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/22/3/635 http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/22/3/635 tries but fails to satisfy my curiosity). It's interesting that anyone would presume that spindlier dendrites as a result of a drug will make the brain function better. It could be the equivalent of The Shining's 100s of pages of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." So the studies should attempt to show an actual increased or decreased facility in learning some task.