The acute effects of cocoa flavanols on temporal and spatial attention.
Aytaç KarabayJefta D SaijaDavid T FieldElkan G AkyürekPublished in: Psychopharmacology (2018)
In this study, we investigated how the acute physiological effects of cocoa flavanols might result in specific cognitive changes, in particular in temporal and spatial attention. To this end, we pre-registered and implemented a randomized, double-blind, placebo- and baseline-controlled crossover design. A sample of 48 university students participated in the study and each of them completed the experimental tasks in four conditions (baseline, placebo, low dose, and high-dose flavanol), administered in separate sessions with a 1-week washout interval. A rapid serial visual presentation task was used to test flavanol effects on temporal attention and integration, and a visual search task was similarly employed to investigate spatial attention. Results indicated that cocoa flavanols improved visual search efficiency, reflected by reduced reaction time. However, cocoa flavanols did not facilitate temporal attention nor integration, suggesting that flavanols may affect some aspects of attention, but not others. Potential underlying mechanisms are discussed.
Keyphrases
- working memory
- low dose
- double blind
- high dose
- placebo controlled
- liver failure
- clinical trial
- respiratory failure
- drug induced
- randomized controlled trial
- intensive care unit
- open label
- study protocol
- hepatitis b virus
- risk assessment
- mass spectrometry
- atomic force microscopy
- extracorporeal membrane oxygenation
- high speed