Author ORCID Identifier
Semester
Spring
Date of Graduation
2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Type
MS
College
Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
Department
Psychology
Committee Chair
Karen G. Anderson
Committee Co-Chair
Raymond Joslyn
Committee Member
Kathleen Morrison
Abstract
Caffeine is one of the most widely consumed drugs in the United States, but its excessive consumption increases the risk of heart disease, sleep problems, and anxiety. In response to these issues, there has been a rise in efforts to find safer alternatives to caffeine while maintaining similar subjective effects. The adaptogenic mushrooms, cordyceps and lion’s mane, are claimed to have similar energy- and mood-enhancing effects as caffeine; however, there is limited research directly comparing their effects to caffeine. A drug-discrimination paradigm, in which rats were trained to discriminate between caffeine and saline, was used to compare the discriminative-stimulus effects of these mushrooms to those of caffeine at two post-administration time points. A training dose of 23 mg/kg of caffeine was used to establish a caffeine discrimination in male Sprague-Dawley rats. After discrimination was established, rats were given varying doses of caffeine (i.p. and p.o.), cordyceps (p.o.), lion’s mane (p.o.), and chlordiazepoxide (i.p.; a negative control) to produce dose-response generalization gradients for each compound across two time points. Dose-dependent increases in generalization were observed for the two routes of administration of caffeine for both tests. No dose-dependent increases in generalization were observed for either mushroom extract during either test, though both extracts reduced response rates dose dependently. These results suggest that under the tested conditions, neither cordyceps nor lion’s mane shares discriminative-stimulus properties with caffeine. Limitations of this study that may have influenced these outcomes are discussed. Future research is encouraged to further examine the relations between these adaptogenic mushrooms and caffeine.
Recommended Citation
Cullinan, Stephen James, "Do the Adaptogenic Mushrooms, Cordyceps Militaris and Hericium Erinaceus, Produce Caffeine-like Discriminative-Stimulus Effects?" (2026). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 13185.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/13185