Analysis of nearly 10,000 nine- to 11-year-olds found regular caffeine consumption was associated with differences in the thickness and surface area of the brain’s cortex, though the findings do not prove harm.
Caffeine is often treated as a routine part of family life, but new research suggests that regular intake may be linked to measurable differences in children’s brains. A report on Real Clear Science said investigators analysed data from 9,632 children aged nine to 11 in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, a large US project tracking young people’s health and brain development over time.
The children reported how many caffeinated drinks they usually had in a week, including coffee, tea and soft drinks, while parents provided information on how long they typically slept. The researchers then used MRI scans to measure the cortex, the brain’s folded outer layer, looking at both its thickness and surface area. Those measures matter because the cortex plays a central role in attention, decision making, emotion and other cognitive functions.
The findings add to a broader body of work showing that childhood and adolescent brain development can be sensitive to early life exposures. Research using the same ABCD dataset has previously linked prenatal tobacco and alcohol exposure with greater cortical thinning and faster reduction in surface area during early adolescence, suggesting that developmental pathways in the brain can be altered by environmental and biological factors well before adulthood. Against that backdrop, the caffeine study does not by itself prove harm, but it does reinforce the idea that what children consume and how much they sleep may be relevant to how their brains develop.
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