Cognition Enhancer Research

oschobero writes to tell us the Economist has a look at pharmaceutical research as it applies to cognition enhancers. While the research is obviously focused on things like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and schizophrenia, the resulting drugs may also have a benefit to healthy minds. "Provigil and Ritalin really do enhance cognition in healthy people. Provigil, for example, adds the ability to remember an extra digit or so to an individual's working memory (most people can hold seven random digits in their memory, but have difficulty with eight). It also improves people's performance in tests of their ability to plan. Because of such positive effects on normal people, says the report, there is growing use of these drugs to stave off fatigue, help shift-workers, boost exam performance and aid recovery from the effects of long-distance flights."

Comments

what has been seen...

[bersl2]

Paradoxically, another glutamate-booster, D-cycloserine, is being tested not to enhance memory, but to abolish it. The paradox is resolved because unlearning (or "extinction", in neurological parlance) is a process similar in its details to learning.

By binding to certain glutamate receptors, D-cycloserine selectively enhances extinction, suppressing the effects of conditioned associations such as anxiety, addiction and phobias. According to Dr Robbins, experiments have shown that if a rat is given a cue that it previously associated with fear at the same time as it receives D-cycloserine, the bad memory can be eliminated. Not only may this help remove unpleasant memories... Does this mean that people might be able to unsee things *coughgoatsecough*

Provigil.

[Bob of Dole]

I've taking Provigil. It's an amazing and weird drug.

On the one hand, It helps endlessly with functioning while sleepy. As a chronic insomniac, I'm never THAT awake, but after two hours of sleep and a provigil, I'm awake enough to drive and take exams. It doesn't even keep you up after it wears off, something every other sleep aid or wake aid I've ever taken does. It avoids the problem of body/mind disconnect, you're AWAKE, not brain awake/body tired or body awake/brain sleepy.

On the other, it has an effect I can only describe as "positional". You can still tell that you're tired, but you only feel it in one part of your head, kinda towards the lower-right-back area. And yes, that's insane.
What's weirder is that if you get a headache while on provigil, you'll feel it in that area too. It's kinda like it's turned off your brain's natural "error reporting" that tells you you're tired/headachey, but it doesn't do it for the whole brain.
I also had some nasty experiences in the bathroom while on it. That's definitely a downside. (Wee, rather than being late for class because I can't wake up I'm late for class because I'm stuck in the bathroom)

I only used it for about two weeks (despite the above praise, it didn't help with my main problem), but I'd definitely use it again if I had the chance. There's enough times where I've not gotten enough sleep for one reason or another but I really have to be at work the next day that it'd be quite handy to have around.

Re:Provigil.

[caffeinemessiah]

I've taking Provigil.

That's a great first sentence to promote a cognition-enhancing drug.

Ritalin is a great study drug.

[urbanriot]

I've used it before and it increased cognition considerably, especially when I was tired and figured I'd have a wasteful night of studying. If I have less than 8 hours sleep, I have difficulty focusing on a single source at one time, and studying is impossible. Ritalin has helped me micro-focus, and not just cram for exams but actually learn topics. If I had a steady source of Ritalin, or a doctor that 'played ball', I might consider experimenting with it more often.

Re:Ritalin is a great study drug.

[Original Replica]

Ritalin has helped me micro-focus, and not just cram for exams but actually learn topics.

I was prescribed Ritalin throughout grade school for ADD by the end of freshman year of college I decided to stop taking it because I had learned to "fake" the cognitive effects. Ritalin takes effect so quickly, that I was able to perceive the difference and use that to learn ways to be almost as effective, but without the drug. 14 years later I still have ADD but can function pretty normally because of what I learned with Ritalin. I have to wonder if the same thing could be done with Provigil, learn the thought patterns that give you the increased cognition, but eventually have the benifit without the drug.

Re:Ritalin is a great study drug.

[Beefpatrol]

I've been learning the same kinds of things with one of the ADD stimulants and an antidepressant for the last few years. One of the best things about these drugs is that they show you what "the other side" feels like. When you've been predominantly in one mode every day since puberty, it can be impossible to even understand what people mean when they ask simple questions about what you are going to do. For instance, there was always cognitive dissonance when a manager would ask me something like, "can you do thing X by deadline D?" My mental answer to a rhetorical question like that was always something like: "maybe." I usually answered verbally in the affirmative because I was aware that it was expected that I would, despite knowing that the actual answer was not so clear. In situations like that, I always felt like I had entered another dimension where people continuously behave in ways that don't make sense. The reason for this, I later found out, was because most of the time, normal people can say "yes" or "no" to a question like that and be sure that unless something extremely unusual were to happen, they would be correct; they either can do it, or they can't, and they know ahead of time which is true. Their reasons for saying "yes" or "no" didn't usually include thoughts like: "technically yes, and I've done it before -- it is actually pretty easy, but my track record for managing to do it is dismal for reasons that I don't understand, so an objective interpretation of the data suggests that a long-winded and unsatisfactory answer that indicates that I really don't know if I will do X by deadline D, and that the reasons for this are beyond my realm of comprehension, is what my reply *should* be, but I'm going to say yes anyway because any other response is going to piss people off. I absolutely hate corporate America -- this kind of weird asking of questions that are obviously unanswerable in an honest fashion must mean that either people are screwing with me or they are intensely stupid."

I didn't realize all this in a concrete manner until somewhere in my late 20s after trying some of these drugs that made things like mental crises, and the utter inability to turn my brain off to focus or sleep optional. I've since taken them on and off as necessary, but being able to intuitively understand what it means to be able to cause one's actions to align with one's intentions on a regular basis is invaluable. I can say with complete honesty that I really didn't understand how the world worked before.

Drug tests

[jamshid]

Yup, won't be longer before passing a drug test for employment means your results have to come back positive.

One small problem...

[Penguinisto]

Taking a somewhat little-understood psychotropic drug for treatment of illness is one thing (especially when prescribing it to children), but it is another thing entirely to start talking it up as a performance enhancer.

What is the long-term (or even all of the short-term) effects of this? IIRC, Ritalin comes with a bucketload of side effects.

I guess that drugs specifically made for the mind start (at least for me) creeping deeper and deeper into questions of morality and ethics than one designed to treat any other body part. Just something that makes me a bit wary about them... For instance, is an "enhanced" person more susceptible to suggestion than otherwise? Are they more focused on the task at hand, but not as aware of their surroundings? How does it affect multitasking? Emotions? Attitude and outlook?

Dunno... but caffeine seems to work just fine for me, and I get to keep a clear mind which I retain full control of while I'm at it.

/P

Re:Oh, great.....

[Martin Blank]

There's a gigantic difference between drugs like amphetamine and methamphetamine and drugs like modafinil (Provigil). They work in different ways, and decades of use by narcoleptic patients shows no significant addictiveness for modafinil (or its predecessor adrafinil, which metabolizes to modafinil). Amphetamine and methamphetamine have strong addictive potential as well as significant side-effects, including jumpiness, jitters, and irritability that are not found in modafinil. (That's not to say there are no side-effects to modafinil, but they are rare or uncommon.)

Digits and Nootropics

[DynaSoar]

To first address the comments regarding number of digits in working memory: the "magic number" is 7 plus or minus 2, the variance being context dependent. To hold more items in memory, which people obviously do, they employ "chunking", or grouping them together and remembering the chunks in the necessary sequence. The 7 digit phone number was based on the original 7 digit idea, the grouping of area code XXX, prefix YYY, and last 4 ZZZZ was based on chunking. Since this chunking is a major action of attention and memory, simply adding a single digit to a single chunk is a weird way to claim improvement.

Yet once again an article on cognition enhancement fails to note its origins and long standing history. The first nootropic, hydergine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydergine , was developed by Albert Hoffmann of Sandoz. While he is best known for LSD, his "problem child", he considered hydergine to be his most important discovery. He credited his longentivity (he died recently at age 102) to using hydergine regularly.

legalize it

[Deanalator]

Modafinil (provigil) is safer, more effective, and less addictive than caffeine.

Unfortunately, possession without a prescription can get you a year in jail. Strangly, it's chemical predecessor, Adrafinil is perfectly legal to buy over the counter (at about a tenth of the cost as well). It actually turns into modafinil in your stomach, but it takes longer to take effect, and the chemical byproducts cause stomach pains and liver problems.

Those aren't the only options...

[slifox]

Ritalin (methylphenidate), Provigil (aka Modafinil), Adderall (mixed amphetamine salts), etc are not the only options. In fact, there is a whole class of cognitive-enhancement drugs, called Nootropics.

The best of these (and arguable one of the safest), in my non-medical opinion, is Piracetam. It is a cyclic derivative of the neurotransmitter GABA, and has been used extensively since the 1960s in clinical studies, for treatment of Alzheimer's (and more), and off-label as a "supplement." Many studies suggest it increases blood flow (and hence oxygenation) to the brain, and protects the brain against damage from alcohol poisoning. It has no known LD-50, and has been clinically tested in daily doses exceeding 50 grams!

I personally use Piracetam to help study, and through my (obviously non-blinded and partially-biased) self-tests, I found that it really does help me learn things faster. After a cramming/studying session, I'll usually look back and realize how much material I've been able to learn in such a short time. All friends I've recommended it to have come to the same conclusion. My dosages vary from 1 gram up to 5 grams at a time, repeating every 3-4 hours.

Unfortunately, the reason why Nootropics aren't used much is because they don't have the intense effects that *stimulants* such as Ritalin do. The effects of Piracetam are very subtle (though the first time is more noticable)--enough so that its easy to get discouraged. However, when you take Ritalin, the stimulation effect is VERY noticeable (and fun, for many people).

The big problems with stimulants are that they aren't great for your body, they can encourage bad sleep habits, they are fun to use (possibly leading to irresponsible use), and they can lead to distraction for those not used to the effects at the used dosage. Additionally, they have terrible come-downs. A responsible stimulant user must recognize these aspects and make efforts to control them, otherwise they will not get any work done, or worse harm themselves!

Disclaimer: I'm not licensed to give medical advice. These are my opinions and are for informational purposes only. Using the mentioned stimulants without a prescription is stupidly illegal (but illegal nonetheless). I won't get into how prohibition is stupid and doesn't work (I think free-use regulation and accurate dispersion of information is the way to go). More importantly though, using these drugs improperly can be unsafe. Make sure you thoroughly research any drugs you use, including over-the-counter drugs, and consult a medical professional when unsure about possible interactions with other drugs or your health conditions.

Wikipedia on Piracetam: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracetam

Erowid on Nootropics: http://www.erowid.org/smarts/

Re:Oh, great.....

[aurispector]

There are no completely safe drugs, there are no drugs without side effects. That being said, even if these drugs are significantly safer, it just seems to be a bad idea to depend on drugs to run your everyday life. The line between theraputic and recreational use is blurring.

If I had to take non-theraputic medications to perform my job I'd get a different job.

Re:Withdrawal and Other Downsides?

[grammar fascist]

I can answer these questions on the average for Adderall and Dexedrine (dextroamphetamines) and Ritalin (methylphenidate).

What happens to your cognition once you stop taking it, after you've gotten used to taking it? Do you get a tolerance, so you not only need higher doses for a smarts boost, but you also just return to your base performance after getting used to it?

Tolerance is rarely an issue with the low doses given to treat ADHD. A couple of back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that an average dose of Adderall (20mg) is about 1/10 an average "first hit" of meth or cocaine. Prescription medications are also designed to metabolize much more slowly than recreational drugs.

Tolerance mainly results from neurons being overexcited and altering receptor sites in response. (This is in fact how caffeine tolerance develops.) People who take these medications under a doctor's care are generally not overstimulated. In fact, with ADHD, because medication corrects understimulation it's usually not an issue at all.

I would be more worried about tolerance if the general population started on them, though.

What's the withdrawal like?

Usually a little mentally fuzzier than before medication and maybe a bit crankier. It lasts about half an hour to an hour. People report that Ritalin and Dexedrine have "rougher edges" than Adderall, which makes sense since Adderall is a mixture of amphetamine salts that metabolize at different rates.

I suspect that maybe the many kids given Ritalin while growing up learn to depend on it for their baseline. When they outgrow their "hyperactivity" (AKA "childhood"), they quit the drugs, and sink into an unfamiliar dullness in which they can't think at their previous baseline without the artificial stimulation.

If they don't outgrow ADHD and they need medication to function, they shouldn't stop.

However, often the medication does have a lasting effect, though not one that people with "OMG DRUGGIES!!!" in mind would predict. It can train your mind to mimic the patterns it gets used to while on medication. People will often lower their dosage over time, and some quit altogether. I'm not aware of anyone needing more until they're a prescription crack-head. Both anecdotal evidence and the literature (peer-reviewed studies) support this.

It also tends to train behavior. While on medication, functional behavior is much easier, and people who learn to function effectively while on medication have an easier time off of it than they did before medication.

Again, I wouldn't apply this to the general population, just to people who use medication to treat neurological problems.

And how much do they just get burned out from the steady drugging?

They only do if the dose is too high. The beautiful thing about stimulants at these dosages is that their cognitive effects don't last into the next day, except for the gradual effects I mentioned.

Re:What? no soviet russia or overlord jokes?

[ady1]

but if I unplug my computer, it will die :(((