Slaking Thirst Boosts Response Time by 14%

Being thirsty might be distracting enough to significantly interfere with your results on a simple response time test.  At least that is what recent research reported in the Frontiers in Human  Neuroscience suggests.

The Live Science blog summarizes the  experiment  nicely in the post,  Drinking Water May Provide a Mental Boost. The bottom line:

“In the study, participants who drank about three cups of water (24 ounces, or 775 milliliters) before taking a battery of cognitive tests performed better on a test that measured reaction times compared with those who did not drink water…Reaction times were 14 percent faster among the water group than the no water group.”

For this effect to work participants needed to feel thirsty and were asked to avoid eating and drinking over the night before the experiment.

The article goes on to report that the link between slaking your thirst and cognitive performance is far from clear.