Coffee, tea, and chocolate are among the most frequently consumed products in the world. The pleasure that many experience from these edibles is accompanied by a range of favorable and adverse effects on the brain that have been the focus of a wealth of recent research. Coffee, Tea, Chocolate, and the Brain presents new information on the long-debated issue about the beneficial and/or potentially negative effects on the brain of the consumption of coffee, tea, and chocolate. With caffeine as the common component in these beverages and food, this volume features important data on the effects of caffeine on sleep, memory, cognition, mood, performance, and more. It also contains specific information on new directions of research on the effect of caffeine on Parkinson's disease, seizures, ischemia, the stress axis, and brain development. Debate on the potential addiction to caffeine is included, as well as discussion of how chocolate and caffeine can induce or alleviate various types of headaches. With contributions from world-renowned experts in the field, this up-to-date reference provides important information for scientists, researchers, industry professionals, and students involved in nutrition, neurology, neuropharmacology, clinical psychology, and other health-related sciences.

Astrid Nehlig, Ph.D., earned a master’s degree in physiology and two Ph.D. degrees in physiology and functional neurochemistry from the scientific University of Nancy, France. She is a research director at the French Medical Research Institute, INSERM, in Strasbourg. Her main research interests are brain metabolism, brain development, the effects of coffee and caffeine on the brain,and temporal lobe epilepsy. She has authored or co-authored approximately 200 articles, books,and book chapters and has been invited to deliver more than 50 lectures at international meetingsand research centers. She has received several grants for her work, mainly from the Medical Research Foundation, NATO, and private companies, and a 2002 award from the American Epilepsy Society.

Dr. Nehlig has spent two years in the United States working in a highly recognized neuroimaging laboratory at the National Institute for Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. She has led anI NSERM research team of 10 to 15 persons for 20 years, resulting in the education of more than15 Ph.D. students and several postdoctoral fellows. She is on the editorial board of the international journal Epilepsia and is a member of the commission of neurobiology of the International League Against Epilepsy and of the French Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism. She is also the scientific advisor of PEC (Physiological Effects of Coffee), the European Scientific Associationof the Coffee Industry. She acts as an expert for numerous scientific journals and international societies, such as NATO, the British Wellcome Trust, and the Australian Medical Research Institutute.