Researchers at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore (NUS Medicine) have found that caffeine can help restore a specific type of memory that is impaired by sleep deprivation. The findings, published in Neuropsychopharmacology , reveal how caffeine acts on a well-defined brain pathway involved in social memory, the ability to recognize and distinguish people we have encountered before. The research provides new insight into how sleep loss affects the brain and suggests that caffeine's benefits may extend beyond simply increasing alertness. How Sleep Loss Affects Social Memory The study was led by Associate Professor Sreedharan Sajikumar and first author Dr. Lik-Wei Wong from the Department of Physiology and the Healthy Longevity Translational Research Program at NUS Medicine. The team focused on a part of the brain known as the hippocampal CA2 region.…