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Cognitive Enhancement Drugs
Neil Halelamien writes "The LA Times has an article on various cognitive enhancement drugs which are currently undergoing clinical trials. These include ampakines which amplify the strength of electrical signals between neurons, HT-0712 which enhances the transfer from short-term to long-term memory, and gene therapy which revitalizes existing neurons. The article also describes successes with the drug Modafinil, which seems to sharpen attention and mental agility. The side effects of these sorts of drugs are not yet fully known, although many neuroscientists think that they may lead to 'mental clutter' or task-obsessiveness."
Quote: It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
~Thufir
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the Nobel prize committee will have to start testing for brain doping?
-or so you'd think
Well. So are we gonna have to start taking drug tests before final exams?
These guys seem to be looking at lots and lots of drugs. They still seem to be ignoring the tried-and-true caffine. *jitter*
Caffine wakes you up, gives you more energy, speeds up your metabolism, and gives you a headache. Plus, it's been in use for years.
Excuse me, I need to go drink more Bawls now.
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
The perfect worker:incapable of thinking of anything but the job he's concentrating on. Expect these to be mandatory by 2015.
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We are stepping into a world where intelligence can be bought. Where we can manipulate our own biology to make us stronger and smarter. Will they do drug tests for college/univ students ?
Is intelligence worth anything? If so, is it fair to give people an advantage because they have money?
Mark my words, this is a dawn of a new era.
We already have Ritalin. Is this one closely related to methamphetamine, too?
A psych prof of mine, Dr. Wilma Marshall, explained to me that Ritalin was like Cocaine for kids.
In a related story I worked with this guy who stole his kids Ritalin for a trip once. Said the exacty same thing - it's like Cocaine without the hangover the next day.
Does cocaine make people smarter?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
You know - of all the things I've learned in medicine and in life in general, there's always a price. The orientals had so much right with their yin and yang idea.
There was a time a few years ago where I was at this incredible ball/party and had the time of my life - it was such a high. The next day I was strangely a bit mellow and depressed. Perhaps all of the neural cascades that had let me have that high the night earlier were now a bit depleted.
I have this espresso machine which I love and the drinks give me this lovely little warm feeling inside - but if I drink too many, when the effect is gone I feel cold and tired.
Same thing for narcotics. We all know about the highs of some of those drugs - which are invariably followed with lows that force people to do anything to spare that.
O.k., so you take a drug that makes you concentrate a bit better. What happens later? Are you a bit dumber for a while afterwards? I respect Cephalon's attempts to stave Parkinsons' but be careful about other "enhancing" drugs.
For every action there's always a reaction. Just live a healthy life - eat well and exercise.
Just wait for the spam to come through. You can sign up there. Get your m0d@f1n1l here...
Nonsense. I've been taking them for years. No they don't. No they don't. No they don't. No they don't. No they don't. No they don't.
I'm going to bet that regular use does lead to OCD, and perhaps they will find that people with OCD have higher levels of brain chemicals that these drugs enhance.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I suppose saying that a lack thereof makes me twitchy and irritable is the same thing. So, I second the thought. (Though it's also a great way to just plain procrastinate...)
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Vioxx and now Celebrex. The COX-2 inhibitors are revealing additional side effects like heart attack and kidney damage in a couple of studies now. Look, drugs are not benign things despite what marketing campaigns would have you believe and they should not be taken lightly. Apparently 44% of Americans are now on prescription drugs of one sort or another and one might start to wonder when the other shoe is going to drop.
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I heard somewhere that caffeine was frowned upon in high-class chess tournaments... will this new discovery get tested for? Brain-doping for chess? :)
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This seems like a useful place to point out an interesting read on Jerry Pournelle's web site on overclocking the brain.
I don't see a direct connection between the two articles, but perhaps someone more informed about neurochemistry could point one out.
Have a look on Google for Piracetam. Similar thing. I tried to find out about side effects, but I couldn't find any. Someone I know takes a load before reading a whole set of Cisco coursebooks. It works for him - He's not a CCIE - yet, but he's a CCISP, and all the other ones.
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Marketing campaigns are required by law to include information about the dangers of taking the drug. I don't think that any amount of butterflies and flowers makes that voice listing the possible side effects seem less insiduous. I don't think that most people take drugs so lightly anymore.
Screw cognitive drugs, I want drugs that give me pre-cognition!
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I for one welcome our new Emergent overlords!
:)
Sorry a bit obscure
Success is as dangerous as failure, hope as hollow as fear.
I think I'll let others be the guinea pigs. Even after clinic trials (which only involve a few thousand people watched for only a year or so) doctors only have the barest of clues as to the effects and side-effects of a drug. It takes a long time, a bunch of studies, and a serious sample size to uncover the more subtle, rare-but-serious and long-term impacts of a medication.
No short-term trial can prove a drug is truly safe and efficacious. Until much, much, more data is in, I think I'll wait.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
While mind-enhancing drugs are novel, mind-enhancing diets and mind-enhancing environments have been the privilage of the well-to-do since time began.
The privilaged generally eat better than the unprivilaged. They generally have less exposure to environmental toxins. They generally have a more education-centric environment growing up.
Even measurements of mental ability can be manipulated by "teaching the test" or "teaching to the test." Someone with a "un-coached" SAT score of 1150 may score 1170 if they've been coached on how to take the test or if their parents or teachers focused on items likely to be on that particular test at the expense of other material.
All in all, if your parents have the means, you are more likely to have a better raw iq, possibly an enhanced measured intelligence, and a better education than someone whose parents are not of means.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Does cocaine make people smarter?
They certainly seem to think so, don't they.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
With Qiang Zao and her line tracing. Immensely intelligent but just psychologically handicapped enough so as never to be a real threat.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
My PC isn't fast enough. I'll enhance it's electrical affinity by plugging it from the 110V socket into this 220V transformer! And my software isn't doing what I want: it's got too many 1s, and not enough zeros... I'll just enhance it with this hex editor...
--
make install -not war
The way it would work is this:
A neural network is set up to control a audio-visual environment. You dynamically measure IQ via the proxy of the (highly correlated) evoked potential response of the subject and backpropagate an error signal through the multimedia neural net inversely proportional to the dynamic IQ of the subject.
Simple in concept. With a little luck we'd have people whose brains had been stimulated to a high IQ state without ending up with something like the lawnmowerman taking over slashdot.
Seastead this.
Well it was just on the evening ABC news 40% of arthritis patints take Celebrex while about 5% should. If you really want to understand how the new drugs reach the market read http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pres cription/hazard/independent.html
In magazine ads for drugs, drug companies are required to print a massive ammount of text, sometimes a whole page, listing side effects and potential problems. With TV ads, sometimes they do mention a couple side effects, usually dry mouth, but at the bottom of the screen they show the text "see our ad in whatever magazine" where they have that full page of text. I've noticed the magazine "Cooking Light" a few times, presumably becaue the full page ad is dirt cheap. Unless you happen to have a copy of this month's Cooking Light in your house, you have no idea what the full list of side effects and complications are.
If I was in charge, I would get rid of TV perscription drug commercials tomorrow. If you have a real medical problem, go see a trained doctor. If that doctor thinks you need medication, he'll write you a perscription. That's how it worked until just a few years ago. Chris Rock does a brilliant bit about drug ads. He talks about the ads just naming symptoms until they hit on something that rings a bell with you. "Do you get sleepy at night? Do you wake up in the morning? I got that. I'm sick!"
-B
I wonder how long it will be before EA starts slipping these drugs into the curly fries at the company cafeteria. Why should employees be allowed to sleep when we can reprogram them not to need it?
My brain is the seat of my consciousness, my consciousness is all that "I" am. It is a very fragile thing, a hard knock to my head will destroy it. Where as my body is in comparison substantially robust, it can survive limbs being broken, and flesh torn apart... but it is not "me", it is my vehicle. It exerts a great deal of control over my brain/consciousness, as all it cares for is its own reproduction... I fight with it every day, as a parent fights the child at only wants to eat candy...
Given this (personal) view who and what I am, I am very very careful of looking after of my brain, for it is all I am. I have done drugs, I have found their effects on my consciousness somewhat,.. novel... but I don't trust that we know enough to mess with the underlying substrate of what makes Me. A small injury to my frontal lobe can turn into OCD. These Cognitive "enhancement" drugs may sound like overclocking your brain to some... but how many key rings have been made from CPUs by over enthusiastic overclockers...
I will leave this stuff to the psyconauts... if that are happy, smart and enjoying there new consciousness at the age of 80... then fine... but I know that the default configuration of my brain is tried and tested over 100,000s of years... I know it will still be (with good care of my body that feeds it) in good working order until my body packs it in from cancer/heart disease, what have you...
2c
Expand your mind, man!
Required reading for internet skeptics
They've already developed a mind enhancing drug, and it's called beer. It helps me understand women with precise clarity, something that I can't do when I'm totally sober and supposedly "thinking straight".
READY.
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agreed. I've been alot more insightful since I started smoking weed, even when I'm not high.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
All I can say, is well, um, uh, I don't remember what I was going to say.
Damn.
They used to call it "coke".
But then Nancy Reagan messed that all up.
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
Cocaine and all of its stimulant cousins don't make you smarter, but they focus all of your attention on one thing. Your nervous system gets turned up a notch and you're ready to get stuff done. I know of people smoking meth and cleaning their apartment for 14 hours.
South Park does a great parody about ADD. The test to see if the 8 year old kids have ADD is the doctor reading all of Moby Dick. If the kids don't pay attention to all of it, they have ADD and need Ritalin.
-B
The pressure to work longer hours, or to do more after work then just sleep for a couple of hours and take a couple of pills will eventually take a toll on the brain, and after years and years of doing it, we may be in a worse state in our old age.
Another problem may be that the pills start losing effect after a while and you need to take more and more to get the same effect, then you notice that if you don't take them, you aren't as alert as you used to be without the pills, and you end up just taking them to reach a "normal" level. Have any studies been done looking into whether these drugs are addictive???
At least in the US, we have some kind of weird "honor"-related relationship with someone's physical abilities. We have a deep-seated feeling that it's "unfair" to dope up in order win physically. This might be because people believe that with enough excercise and hard work, anyone can be an Olympic Athelete.
:)
I think most people don't have the same kind of feelings about intelligence, because we regard it as an inborn thing. Either you're smart or you're not, and that's all there is too it, right?
I know that my intellect takes a lot of work to maintain. I'm quick, but my short-term memory isn't great and my logical abilitiy isn't much above average. I have to work very hard to keep my brain in a state where I can program computers, solve math in my head, remember things, and generally keep my nickname as "that smart guy." I may be predisposed to intelligence, but that doesn't mean that I can slack off.
In the US at least, I doubt we'd ever see "brain testing" because people don't regard intelligence as something you can build, unlike physical aptitude. People don't associate that weird puritanical "honor"-relationship with Matheletes.
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ritalin loses all its euphoria when taken orally, when snorted however (Not the slow-release kind though) it gives off a nice almost coke like buzz.
Almost related: Ritalin killed my creativity so now I've switched to Dextro-Amphetamine Sulphate (Dexedrine/Adderall). Which has a nicer overall feel, rush, controllability but most of all doesn't automatically makes you a pencil-pusher (Methylfenidate did)
...and not a single mention of Paul Erdös?
Unfortunately, people are already taking drugs to perform better on the SATs and other tests.
Adderall, a drug meant to treat ADD and ADHD, is one of the most commonly abused drugs. Its purpose is to help people with disabilities "focus" better, but it is more often than not used by people who don't even have mental handicaps, increasing test scores and giving some students an unfair advantage. This highly addictive drug, as with most drugs, requires more usage to get the same buzz or energy boost as previously obtained by the abuser.
Some side effects of the drug are: increased paranoia, delusions, and heart attacks or strokes.
Interestingly enough, the drug mentioned in the article seems to be fairly similar to the way Adderall works (the whole point about making the user more focused).
But given our culture, penis pills will still outsell brain enlargement pills 10-1
Can we enroll Dubya in the trials?
These drugs are not in fact novel; there are already drugs with the same conventration enhancing effects; Penural and Etracine are both in wide use, and are specifically designed to improve concentration and eye hand co-ordination.
There might be some utility in developing these new drugs further, since they may not interact with Intervol, which is sometimes a problem.
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Nootropics (aka "Smart Drugs") have received a lot of attention in recent years. While many skeptics remain, there are quite a few avid followers of the nootropic "fad". Two great resources for the beginner are Smart Drugs and Smart Drugs II, although a few issues have been pointed out by some people.
FWIW I've come up with a number of metaphors for my experience of being autistic, and it might be useful to examine these in the context of "cognitive enhancement". There are in the "self-awareness" article directly accessible here (URL may change in the future) or through my domain.
In any event, it may be prudent to go back to the movie "Charly" and ponder his answer to the question, "What do you see?" and the ensuing dialog. Seeing more clearly comes at a price...
As any engineer can tell you, there are always trade-offs in any design change. In this case, those trade-offs are "side effects".
It may be possible to optimize human beings for some particular task using drugs of various sorts - but what criterion will we use to determine what changes we will make?
I envisage a sort of corporate dystopia, in which people optomize themselves to maximize their utility to their employers, altering their own brain chemistry to make themselves into perfect employees - we can argue what traits such a human tool would have, but they're probably not very laudable.
On the other hand, people ought to be able to have any neurochemistry they want; under more generally egalitarian social arrangements, such drugs would simply enable people to do that, which would be good.
Maybe I've just been reading too much science fiction.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Chris Rock does a brilliant bit about drug ads. He talks about the ads just naming symptoms until they hit on something that rings a bell with you. "Do you get sleepy at night? Do you wake up in the morning? I got that. I'm sick!"
Acually it was Greg Giraldo in his stand up acts-not Chris Rock. You can also hear that bit in the song by lazyboy called "Underwear goes inside the pants"
You have no business going to a doctor and telling him/her what drug you want to take to cure what ailes you
It's my body, I think I do in fact have a right to decide what's going to go into it. And you're seriously overestimating most doctors grasp of pharmacology. It's just one aspect of many, many, things they have to attempt to keep up with. It's not that difficult for someone with even a moderate background in the area who has out of interest in their condition spent time druging through databases to know more about a particular drug, or class of drugs, than a gp.
Everything will be taken away from you.
I have pretty wide experience with stimulants (and depressants, mucle relaxants, opiates, cannibinoids, etc.) and I found modafinil, AKA Provigil, to be a nice, long, peppy buzz with a relatively mild comedown-depressive effect. I still prefer methylphenidate because of the stronger buzz and shorter-term effects. It's interesting to note that the IOC recently banned it as a performance-enhancing stimulant, and Victor Conte of BALCO has accused Marion Jones of being a user. It's definitely something I prefer to take in the morning or with lunch, though, as the effects last six to eight hours and are not easily overcome by taking depressants (alcohol, marijuana) to counterindicate the effects.
Thanks for the link! Here it is linkified: How Independent is the FDA? Karma whoring, of course! :-)
Anyone who reads Slashdot regularly has no need to imagine it....
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
New Zealand and the USA are AFAIK the only two countries that permit advertising of prescription medicine on TV. It would be interesting to compare how these ads have evolved and how they work differently within the health frame work in the two countries.
This is true for educational and social achievement, but raw IQ appears remarkably stable. See this Minnesota twin study for an example. I was honestly rather surprised when I started looking at studies like these by just how much of a role genetics plays in IQ.
I would like to make a few points myself, as an avid nootropic ("smart-drug") user. Nootropic: a word coined by Dr. Giurgea to describe a new class of drugs that act as cognitive enchancers with no side effects or toxicity, from Greek words noos, meaning mind and tropein meaning toward. The December 6th issue of newsweek had in huge font on the cover "Memory Drugs", and talked of ampakines, but also called the older nootropics "shots in the dark". If they are shots in the dark, I highly recommend shooting in the dark. A lot of pharmy companies would rather come up with more patentable/profitable drugs and chemicals.
There are a lot of drugs now adays that are considered smart drugs. Some are the 'racetams (piracetam, aniracetam, pramiracetam, oxiracetam). I have taken piracetam and aniracetam to my personal benefit, as I do suffer from attention, concentration, and general mental-clarity problems. Piracetam is super non-toxic and I highly recommend trying it (Do your research, google it!). It is thought to increase oxygen in the brain and act as a neuroprotectant, especially in environments with decreased oxygen.
There are also amino acids that are considered smart drugs, like l-theanine which produces a calm-concentrated mood, the amino is found in green tea, and is thought to be why green tea hardly gives the jitters. Try it for yourself by taking l-theanine with caffiene (coffee as a most likely source). So all of the posters who say "Hey, coffee/caffiene is all I need!", why not try supplementing with a natural amino acid. Vinpocetine is also a very usefull suppliment, it increases the blood flow to the brain, and is derived from the periwinkle plant. DMAE is also considered a smart-drug (dimethyl-amino-ethanol). DMAE is a precursor to acetyl-choline, one of the most used neurotransmitters. There are a whole lot more out there, so I highly recommend checking it out. Re-quoting a quote from http://smi2le.biz ( who also happens to be a cheap supplier of such suppliments [no affliction] )
"In 2004 Out-Caste agents started circulating the rumor that Intelligence was the most important factor in human life.
They said: "What else do you value? Love? Virtue? Money? Power? Freedom? Truth? All of these can be enhanced by increasing intelligence. A failure to increase intelligence can only diminish our ability to obtain and enjoy those goods.""
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
I would be very interested in using any safe mind-enhancing drug. However, the brain is not a computer and life is not a pre-mediated routine.
If people start using memory and attention enhancing drugs to ground themselves more in reality and their current world view/direction, I think it's important that people also start using psychedelics and other mentally-opening/freeing drugs to make sure they don't get bogged down in the now-now-now.
Basically psychedelics allow you an escape from grounding forces (like attention, or memory) to go and question important, overarching meta-questions -- where am I going? what does the world mean and what's my place in it? who are my friends and how do I feel about them? how do I feel about the future? etc. These would be a good counter-balance to the mind-enhacing drugs, which help you achieve goals formed from reflection upon your insight, more efficiently.
I'm not really advocating psychedelic drug use for everyone in general (well, not in this post at least, heh). But as "regular", not cognitively-enhanced people we supposedly have some sort of balance of 'free-thought' with which we question and reflect on Big, Important Matters and 'attentive/constrained thought' with which we make short-term goals happen. The two are a feedback process. If we're shifting the balance by increasing the duraction of our 'attentive/constrained thought', we need to have a way of increasing the intensity of our 'free-thought' so that we don't loose sight of the big picture.
Sharpens you up for a bit o' the old ultra-violence.
you know what the real problem here is?
doctors are afraid to precribe narcotic pain killers. which, if used as directed, only have constipation as a long-term side effect, and possible addiction.
and for a cancer patient - who the hell cares if they get addicted to percocet?
... hi bingo
Remember the incident a few years back at the Winter Games in Nagano with the US snowboarder getting in trouble for the pot? He said he smoked grass before he rode because it helped him relax and focus. Now, up till that point, marijuana had not officially been on the Olympic Commitee's list of banned substances, but that all changed when their research concluded that yes indeed, getting stoned may increase athletic performance. So now, if you're an Olympic athlete, marijuana is verboten.
I would add my own personal anecdotes in support of their findings, but I seem to have forgotten them for some reason...
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
This is a classic urban legend:
A college student is obsessing about his final exams. In the week before his big exam, he starts staying up all night to cram, pounding down pots of coffee. Finally, he starts taking amphetamines to stay wired. He has a marathon 48-hour study session right before his big final, and finally heads down to take the big test.
He's in the zone. He knows every answer and remembers every last detail. He flies through his exam, writing voluminous essays, and heads back to his room to crash.
A few hours later, he is awoken from deep sleep by his professor calling. "There's a problem with your exam," his professor tells him. "Can you come by my office?"
The student is freaking out, and runs right down there. He's greeted by his professor, who's giving him an odd look.
"What's wrong with my exam, professor? Didn't I write enough on the essays?"
The professor gives him another long look. "Young man, you wrote the entire essay in tiny letters on one line."
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I can't say I've experienced any, but I might not have been a long term enough user to have experienced any.
I took it recreationally in college, 20 years ago. Freshman year it was a 4-5 times a month drug, sophomore maybe 1-2 times a month, with only maybe a dozen doses the rest of my college years.
At my peak in my freshman year, I was taking 2-3 hits of blotter (small bits of paper soaked in LSD about 1/8 the size of a stamp) maybe twice a week. The more we took the greater the dose required to really get more than a stimulant-type effect from it.
I knew a couple of habitual users who took half or quarter hits for the stimulation effect only before a night of heavy drinking. LSD makes you feel immune to liquor's psychological effects. I used to not drink as a rule when taking LSD, although once I did go to a party where the booze was free and drank so much that I could barely walk, despite not feeling drunk at all.
The effect was generally intense halucinations for about 2-3 hours and tapering off after that depending on dose, unbelievable physical energy (we often walked 10 miles in a night, in any weather), and an intense feeling of really "getting it" and achieving intense understanding which was forgotten once it wore off. A portable dictation machine affirmed the fact that we didn't actually achieve anything beyond the feeling of getting it -- insights were gibberish.
The downside was "coming down". It'd be 4 in the morning and we'd start to feel physically tired, a little bored, and mainly just wishing it was over. But sleep was hard to come by -- usually you'd doze for 4-5 hours around 5-6 AM and the next day was just shot. I think something like Xanax, Ativan or Valium would have helped. Booze and/or pot really didn't.
Eventually I grew tired of the 'coming down' part and killing the next day completely. Finding people suitable to take it with was an issue, too. Initiating someone to LSD was a risky issue, as some people tended to get a little overwhelmed by the experience. It's also a pretty serious drug to get caught with -- two people I knew casually got caught with 50 some doses and ended up doing felony jail time. And then there's the whole issue of buying it, dosage, and so on.
To this day, I have yet to experience a "flashback" or any of the other spooky tales associated with it. I don't have any real problems with focusing or anything else, and a recent MMPI test indicated that other than scoring high on the cynacism index, I don't have any obvious personality problems.
I wouldn't take it again, though. I think it was enlightening to some extent as a college student, but I think now it would just be stress inducing.
Here is a site that has been looking at this issue, among others in similar field for some years now. Among others, freedom of thought and pharmacotherapy (drugs used in therapy that "disable" the brains ability to get high off illicit drugs) are in discussion. http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/
Even after MANY years of testing, a lot of the drugs that fall under the heading Nootropics have few to no side effects even when taken at massive doses. Another drug to look into after Piracetam is Vasopressin. There are several others as well. Very interesting reading.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
Maybe you are looking at it the wrong way; IQ is only an inaccurate measure of intelligence, however it's a very accurate measure of success.
So look at this way, the parents are more successful, because of their intelligence, and the corresponding indicator of that intelligence would be the IQ.
I sig, therefore I was.
I've been alot more insightful since I started smoking weed, even when I'm not high.
Your blog says otherwise...
I am God!
I see it perfectly clearly. Consider the laws of physics. Everything in the universe holds to them. I certainly do. BUT! What defines the laws of physics? It is clearly what I do that defines them. It is what everything does but me included. So then I am God! So is everyone else of course but really its ME!
That is real insight for me. I decree that we shall all smoke weed. Then everyone can be as insightful as this fine gentleman.
not all doctors are liberal with pain killers for terminal patients, or patients that obviously *need* them.
for example
specifically, from the article:
This consensus statement is necessary based on the following facts:
* Undertreatment of pain is a serious problem in the United States, including pain among patients with chronic conditions and those who are critically ill or near death.
* Effective pain management is an integral and important aspect of quality medical care, and pain should be treated aggressively.
* For many patients, opioid analgesics--when used as recommended by established pain management guidelines--are the most effective way to treat their pain, and often the only treatment option that provides significant relief.
* Because opioids are one of several types of controlled substances that have potential for abuse, they are carefully regulated by the Drug Enforcement Administration and other state agencies. For example, a physician must be licensed by State medical authorities and registered with the DEA before prescribing a controlled substance.
* In spite of regulatory controls, drug abusers obtain these and other prescription medications by diverting them from legitimate channels in several ways, including fraud, theft, forged prescriptions, and via unscrupulous health professionals.
----
so while you may know "good" doctors who use every tool at their disposal in their practice, many, many, many people in the US do not.
... hi bingo
The World Bridge Federation already tests for drugs and some has already lost a medal for refusing the test.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
I have a biotech background from school. With a few weeks of research, I can pretty consistently find out more about my condition and the most up-to-date treatments than my doctor knows.
Often, I'm aware of side effects that they don't inform me of, or the drug companies don't inform me of.
The problem is that doctors get far too much advertising from drug companies already, and they aren't always the most critical consumers of information. Moreover, they're frequently in a hurry, trying to minimize costs because of their relationship with insurers, etc.
Ultimatly, people are responsible for their own health. If they're dumb about it, that's their own fault. But I'd like to see Pfizer (to give one example) fined for failing to disclose its sponsorship of research that it published in JAMA. (on female sexual dysfunction, when Pfizer makes Viagra)
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
You mean if I'd been "coached", I could of raised my score from 1585 to 1600!? Damn! While thoughtful, this idea is flawed in many respects. First, there is is no doubt that well off families have more resources and thus have advantages. But there are many ways for less well off families to obtain the equivalent advantages. I would say that at least in America the only truly disadvantaged families are the very poor. Middleclass families all have sufficient means to have rich environments for children to learn. Secondly, just because a family is well off doesn't mean they will actually produce better environments for raising children with better intellect. Thirdly, anyone interested in getting "coached" in SAT can do so very simply, there are books and many schools also prepare students for SATs. In fact, many schools with historically poor SAT scores spend a great deal of time teaching exactly the information tested on SATs in hopes of getting better school marks. This of course produces students who are great at taking tests, but very poor at thinking independently. Unfortunately, SATs are one of the traditionally WASP based intelligence tests, and hence are written from a certain social perspective, and there is a limit to how well students from othe sub-cultures can reasonably expect to do on them. Were the SAT to be written by a group of professors who grew up in let's say Watt's Park, there would almost certainly be a very different distribution of scores nationwide. The problem with intelligence tests is they are all skewed to a particular perspective. Just because someone scores 1170 on an SAT doesn't necessarily mean that a person who scored a 1030 is not as smart. IQ tests, are only useful for judging people from a common societal background. Deaf people routinely fail the English section on SATs and graduation tests. Not because they are dumb but because they are not exposed to the idiomatic speech on a regular basis, and also they use a very reduced dictionary. There is no sign for gorgeous; the sign for beautiful is used instead. Well, I could continue with other flaws in the above post, but I need to go eat my brain building popcorn and get some brain rejuvenating sleep.
Cocaine's one helluva drug.
I'm Rick James, Bitch.
Just wanted to say that your post was great apart from the above question which is somewhat unfortunate.
If you expect to start feeling your brain age, what are the likely consequences of such an expectation?
feel brain age -> believe getting old -> start acting old -> start bad posture -> start bad health
Here's another:
feel brain age -> notice normal brain underperformance -> expect brain to underperform -> brain underperforms
Technically speaking, the question is both an embedded hypnotic command and a presuppositional pattern.
...and it does work similar to speed.
The problem is that yes, it did sharpen my concentration and make me awake all night(I worked a grave shift in a NOC) but it also made me extremely frustrated, short on patience and irritable. I broke three mice and four keyboards before I stopped taking the stuff.
Alright, try to keep up on this logical march. Keep in mind, some of this is speculation, but all have a basis in fact.
/would love to volunteer for a clinical trial investigating the above scenario.
//The Matrix has you.
1) Muscles are controlled by neurons.
2) At any given time, only a fraction of muscle fibers are available in a given muscle. This is due to some neurons having high thresholds from never being used or used infrequently. The ratio of total fibers/useable fibers is called "neuromuscular efficiency", and the mechanism by which thresholds are lowered is called the "Hebbian Mechanism". (for this discussion, I am speaking mainly of fast-twitch fibers).
3) It's possible to train and open up new neurons through heavy strength training, such as Powerlifting/Olympic Weightlifting (note: not Bodybuilding).
4) Strength athletes (high jumpers, sprinters, weightlifters, powerlifters) in general have a higher degree of NM efficiency than untrained individuals (somewhere along the lines of 30-50% as opposed to 5%-10%). Case in point- Judd Biasotto, former powerlifter who, at a bodyweight of 132, bench pressed over 300 lbs. and squatted over 600 lbs. In some extreme life or death cases, effciency can be increased dramatically, by either drugs(PCP), adrenaline(mothers lifting cars on their sides to save their children trapped underneath), or mental disease. Basically, you can lift a car, your brain either
a) doesn't know or
b) won't let you.
5) Increasing NM efficiency involves lowering present neural thresholds, making an activity "easier" in terms of neural drive, and allowing new neurons/muscle fibers to be recruited.
6) Some of the drugs mentioned in the article strengthen neural connections.
7) If these drugs affect motor neurons in the body as well, the thresholds for these neurons would be greatly lowered, and neuromuscular efficiency would increase dramatically, maybe past reachable norms. (>50%) (hell, if they affect motor neurons as well as neurons in the brain, any technical skill could be used as an example).
8) Net result: dramatic increases in strength in a relatively short amount of time, without a significant increase in bodyweight. The ability to exert more force would come from using nearly all the available fibers in an existing muscle.
9) ???
10) Profit!
I, for one, welcome our Volvo lifting overlords.
That's right. All your base.
I was referring to the following bit from the Wikipedia article. I haven't read The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, but I have read My Brain is Open, and his drug use was mentioned there.
Ritalin may make kids without ADD or ADHD high... But trust me. I was on Ritalin for 9 years. It never once made me high. Quite the opposite in fact. People who actually have ADD find that Ritalin, instead of making them high, actually slows them down, enabling them to concentrate and actually get something done for once in their life.
In fact, Ritalin is sometimes used as a diagnostic for ADD. You give it to someone, and then, if it makes them stoned, they don't have ADD, if it does not make them stoned, then they probably do.
That said, it does still keep some stimulant side effects even for people with ADD. When I took it, it kept me awake, so that I had to do my homework in the afternoon instead of the evening, because if I took a dose late enough to do it in the evening, I wouldn't sleep most of the night.
I am well aware that Ritalin does help everyone concentrate, but if it makes you high DON'T take it. Please. It is a mind-altering drug, very very similar in fact to speed, and it can be dangerous. It is addictive, and once somebody is addicted, they tend to go to great lengths and great expenses to get it. We used to get my Ritalin through a mail-order pharmacy that my pediatrician recommended, and about 1/3 of the time, the prescription would get stolen somewhere in transit.
Now, today, I wouldn't in fact recommend Ritalin for anybody... Because there is a new, non-stimulant alternative drug out called Strattera. Some people don't like it, because "It doesn't give me the rush and energy that Ritalin does." Well, if thats the case... go talk to your doctor. You almost certainly don't have ADD, and shouldn't be taking Ritalin in the first place (See above). Strattera works for 24 hours, so theres no sudden coming off the dose midday, and since it's not a stimulant, it doesn't keep you up at night, and it doesn't kill your appetite nearly as much as Ritalin or Concerta (really slow release Ritalin variant). So, on the whole, I think it is a much better drug.
ADD has been so overdiagnosed in the last decade or so (oh, your kid is having problems in school? ADD. Watches too much TV? ADD. You (the parents) are schmucks who have no idea how to raise a kid? The kid has ADD. get the picture?), that Ritalin has kind of become crack for kids. So many kids are on it who shouldn't be, and consequently go through a large part of their childhood stoned a mile high. But properly used, Ritalin is definitely not crack for kids, and for the sake of those who do have ADD... resist the stereotype. It may be true in a large number of cases, but correct those cases rather than condemning Ritalin (and those who use it) in general.
Rant.end();
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
I think we can agree that there's a correlation, but I don't think there's enough evidence to prove causation (in either direction).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
You might want to consider factors other than the moderation on your slashdot comments when you determine how insightful you are.
I wish that my inferiority complex were as good as yours.
-RenderHead
For example, aspirin can cause an upset stomach in some people -- but it's also been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease. If I were in a high-risk group, I know I'd rather have a grumbling stomach than a malfunctioning heart.
The studies showing the protective effect were done with buffered aspirin to protect the participants' stomachs. The buffers are typically magnesium salts.
There are claims that further studies using plain aspirin without the magnesium showed no protective effects and were not published. The implication is a simply magnesium supplement, or your daily vitamin is just as effective without the side-effects.
Does anybody here know of some scientific study of this?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Long-haul truckers and Air Force pilots have long popped amphetamines to ward off drowsiness. Generations of college students have swallowed over-the-counter caffeine tablets to get through all-nighters. But such stimulants provide only a temporary edge, and their effect is broad and blunt -- they boost the brain by juicing the entire nervous system.
Its the law... how long till it gets demonized by FUD and becomes illegal, like MDMA, LSD and cannabis?
WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.