This Is Your Brain on Coffee By Gretchen Reynolds

UNIVERSITE PARIS 7 DENIS DIDEROT
U.F.R. Etudes Interculturelles de Langues
Appliquées (EILA)
AN CRAN 23 / COMPTE RENDU INTERLG.
Enseignant(e) : M. Zimina
2013-2014 – Semestre 1 – session 1
1. COMPTE RENDU INTERLANGUE
TEXTE 1
Rédigez en français un compte rendu du texte suivant, en 225 mots, plus au moins 10%.
The New York Times Magazine – June 2013, Issue 9
This Is Your Brain on Coffee
By Gretchen Reynolds
For hundreds of years, coffee has been one of the two or three most popular beverages on earth.
But it’s only recently that scientists are figuring out that the drink has notable health benefits.
In one large-scale epidemiological study from last year, researchers primarily at the National
Cancer Institute parsed health information from more than 400,000 volunteers, ages 50 to 71,
who were free of major diseases at the study’s start in 1995. By 2008, more than 50,000 of the
participants had died. But men who reported drinking two or three cups of coffee a day were
10 percent less likely to have died than those who didn’t drink coffee, while women drinking
the same amount had 13 percent less risk of dying during the study. It’s not clear exactly what
coffee had to do with their longevity, but the correlation is striking.
Other recent studies have linked moderate coffee drinking — the equivalent of three or four 5ounce cups of coffee a day or a single venti-size Starbucks — with more specific advantages: a
reduction in the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, basal cell carcinoma1 (the most common
skin cancer), prostate cancer, oral cancer and breast cancer recurrence.
Perhaps most consequential, animal experiments show that caffeine may reshape the
biochemical environment inside our brains in ways that could stave off dementia2. In a 2012
experiment at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign3, mice were briefly starved of
oxygen, causing them to lose the ability to form memories. Half of the mice received a dose of
caffeine that was the equivalent of several cups of coffee. After they were reoxygenated, the
caffeinated mice regained their ability to form new memories 33 percent faster than the
uncaffeinated. Close examination of the animals’ brain tissue showed that the caffeine disrupted
1
Le carcinome basocellulaire est un cancer de la peau.
La démence est une sérieuse perte ou réduction des capacités cognitives.
3
L’université de l’Illinois à Urbana-Champaign est classée parmi les plus prestigieuses mondialement.
2
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UNIVERSITE PARIS 7 DENIS DIDEROT
U.F.R. Etudes Interculturelles de Langues
Appliquées (EILA)
AN CRAN 23 / COMPTE RENDU INTERLG.
Enseignant(e) : M. Zimina
2013-2014 – Semestre 1 – session 1
the action of adenosine4, a substance inside cells that usually provides energy, but can become
destructive if it leaks out when the cells are injured or under stress. The escaped adenosine can
jump-start a biochemical cascade leading to inflammation, which can disrupt the function of
neurons, and potentially contribute to neurodegeneration5 or, in other words, dementia.
In a 2012 study of humans, researchers from the University of South Florida6 and the University
of Miami tested the blood levels of caffeine in older adults with mild cognitive impairment, or
the first glimmer of serious forgetfulness, a common precursor of Alzheimer’s disease, and then
re-evaluated them two to four years later. Participants with little or no caffeine circulating in
their bloodstreams were far more likely to have progressed to full-blown Alzheimer’s than those
whose blood indicated they’d had about three cups’ worth of caffeine.
There’s still much to be learned about the effects of coffee. “We don’t know whether blocking
the action of adenosine is sufficient” to prevent or lessen the effects of dementia, says Dr.
Gregory G. Freund, a professor of pathology at the University of Illinois who led the 2012 study
of mice. It is also unclear whether caffeine by itself provides the benefits associated with coffee
drinking or if coffee contains other valuable ingredients. In a 2011 study by the same
researchers at the University of South Florida, for instance, mice genetically bred to develop
Alzheimer’s and then given caffeine alone did not fare as well on memory tests as those
provided with actual coffee. Nor is there any evidence that mixing caffeine with large amounts
of sugar, as in energy drinks, is healthful. But a cup or three of coffee “has been popular for a
long, long time,” Dr. Freund says, “and there’s probably good reasons for that.”
Nb mots = 672
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/this-is-your-brain-on-coffee/
4
L'adénosine est présente dans l'ensemble du corps et joue un rôle important dans les processus biochimiques.
Les maladies neurodégénératives provoquent une détérioration du fonctionnement des cellules nerveuses.
6
L'Université de Floride du Sud est la neuvième plus grande université des Etats-Unis.
5
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