- Title
- Dose–response effect of L-theanine on psychomotor speed, sustained attention, and inhibitory control: a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study
- Creator
- Dassanayake, Tharaka L.; Wijesundara, Devasmitha; Kahathuduwa, Chanaka N.; Weerasinghe, Vajira S.
- Relation
- Nutritional Neuroscience Vol. 26, Issue 11, p. 1138-1146
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1028415X.2022.2136884
- Publisher
- Pharma Intelligence
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2023
- Description
- Background: L-theanine is a non-protein-forming amino acid found in tea. Previous research shows high doses (100–400 mg) of L-theanine enhances attention, mainly by reducing mind wandering and distracter processing. We hypothesized that these indirect mechanisms could significantly improve the performance of low-level attentional tasks, whereas the relative contribution could be less in complex attentional tasks that require active, higher-order processing of target stimuli. Methods: To test this hypothesis, we conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled, counterbalanced, four-way crossover study in 32 healthy young adults, where we compared the effects of three doses of L-theanine (100, 200 and 400 mg) with a placebo (distilled water), administered before and 50 min after dosing, on three attentional tasks from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery [viz. Reaction Time (RTI)–visuomotor speed, Rapid Visual Information Processing (RVP)–sustained attention, and Stop Signal Task (SST)–inhibitory control]. Results were analyzed in dose × time repeated measures ANOVA models, with subsequent pairwise comparisons. Results: Active doses significantly improved reaction times in the RTI (100–200 mg) and RVP (200–400 mg) tasks from baseline (p < 0.05), but once controlled for the change-from-baseline caused by placebo, only the RTI simple reaction times showed significant improvements, following 100 mg (Δ = 16.3 ms, p = 0.009) and 200 mg (Δ = 16.9 ms, p = 0.009) of L-theanine. Conclusions: Consistent with our hypothesis, these findings suggest that L-theanine significantly improves attention in simple visuomotor tasks, but not in more complex sustained attention tasks, or executive control tasks that require top-down inhibition of pre-active responses.
- Subject
- theanine; attention; cognitive functions; reaction time; sustained attention; inhibitory control
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1492798
- Identifier
- uon:53416
- Identifier
- ISSN:1028-415X
- Language
- eng
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