Coffee 'experience', not caffeine, may be what wakes us up: study

Brain scans have shown that the wake-up jolt we get from coffee comes not from the caffeine, but from the entire "experience of having a coffee," researchers say. — Photo: Christin Klose/dpa

It is an industry worth over half a billion dollars, the crema-topped elixir of choice for hundreds of millions of people and the centrepiece of as many sepia-filtered social media posts.

But the mild buzz from a morning coffee, it turns out, is not just down to the caffeine, but the general "experience of having a coffee," researchers now say.