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.
Keywords: Theanine; attention; cognitive functions; inhibitory control; placebo-controlled trial; reaction time; stop-signal task; sustained attention.