from the medication-must-be-the-answer dept.
Humans in 2015 have a small arsenal of tools available to at least temporarily upgrade our brains via the increasingly popular paradigm of "cognitive enhancement."
This is a different boost than that offered by sketchy as-seen-on-NPR brain training schemes, offering literal, physiological neuro-manipulations via either chemistry or electricity. It's no secret that drugs like Adderall and Ritalin are widely sought after among healthy populations looking for an extra push, while electronic stimulant headsets are seeing a somewhat quieter or at least less fretted-about rise. Do they really work? We mostly don't know, warns cognitive neuroscientist Martha Farah in this week's issue of Science.
Original paper available here, or you can just read the vice.motherboard.com article.
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BBC presenter Benjamin Zand recently took what he believes was a nootropic, or smart drug. The reporter is uncertain since he ordered the tablets online. In this downbeat report, he recounts the effects of the presumed modafinil:
Many so-called smart drugs have conventional uses - a popular one, modafinil, is used to treat excessive need for sleep caused by narcolepsy or shift work. But they are also being taken, in growing numbers, by people looking to work more effectively. Modafinil was dubbed the "world's first safe smart drug" by researchers at Harvard and Oxford universities who suggested its effects were "low risk" when taken in the short term. But side effects can include insomnia, headaches and potentially dangerous skin rashes, and there is a lack of long-term data.
Nevertheless, having read such positive reviews online - some claiming smart drugs had drastically improved their university grades - I decided to take it as an experiment. While it is illegal to sell modafinil in the UK without a prescription, it is not illegal to buy. There are many websites, often based in India, which make it available to purchase.
[...] The following day, a train journey presented what I expected to be a perfect opportunity to get some work done with the aid of a smart pill. I was wrong. I became distracted - more so than normal. While the drug made me focus, it was on the wrong things - such as playing video games on my smartphone. As the time passed, I began to develop a very bad headache, I lost my appetite and I needed to use the bathroom - constantly. While my brain wasn't working any faster, my bladder certainly was.
That evening, I began to feel the effects of modafinil's "wakefulness promoting agent". When I tried to get to sleep, I found myself unable to switch off until the early hours of the morning. I also found an itchy lump on the back of my leg - one on my arm appeared too the following day.
My experiences seemed a far cry from those of others. Jason Auld - an athlete and entrepreneur from Edinburgh - says he feels like he can achieve virtually anything on modafinil. "It just makes you feel as if you're operating at 100%, you're putting in all you can put in. Usually you don't think that's possible, but modafinil allows me to do it."
Related:
Cognitive Enhancement is Ethically Risky Business
Drug Unlocks Malleable, Fast-Learning, Child-Like State In Adult Brain
Ethics and the Enhanced Soldier of the Near Future
Cognitive Enhancement May Not be All It's Cracked Up To Be.
HRL Laboratories (a research center owned by General Motors and Boeing) has found that transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) can improve learning:
Done in collaboration with McGill University in Montreal and Soterix Medical in New York, the study was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA)'s Restoring Active Memory (RAM) program. Published October 12, 2017, in the journal Current Biology, tDCS in animals showed learning accelerated by about 40% when given 2 mA noninvasively to the prefrontal cortex without increased neuronal firing. This study showed it was modulated connectivity between brain areas, not neuron firing rates, that accounted for the increased learning speed.
The behavioral task in this experiment was associative learning. The macaques had to learn arbitrary associations between a visual stimulus and a location where they would get a reward—a visual foraging task. The initial foraging trials took about 15 seconds, and once the animal learned the location of the reward, it took approximately 2 seconds to recall and find the target. Subjects in the control condition required an average of 22 trials to learn to obtain the reward right way[sic]. With tDCS they required an average of 12 trials.
"In this experiment we targeted the prefrontal cortex with individualized non-invasive stimulation montages," said Dr. Praveen Pilly, HRL's principal investigator on the study. "That is the region that controls many executive functions including decision-making, cognitive control, and contextual memory retrieval. It is connected to almost all the other cortical areas of the brain, and stimulating it has widespread effects. It is also the target of choice in most published behavioral enhancement studies and case studies with transcranial stimulation. We placed the tDCS electrodes on the scalp in both our control and stimulation conditions. The behavioral effect was revealed when they learned to find the reward faster."
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Facilitates Associative Learning and Alters Functional Connectivity in the Primate Brain (DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.09.020) (DX)
Previously: Cognitive Enhancement May Not be All It's Cracked Up To Be.
Zapping Your Brain may Reduce Depression, Ease Pain
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @09:37AM
Mentioned in article: Adderall, Ritalin, modafinil, amphetamine, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), alternating current stimulation (tACS), random noise stimulation (tRNS), pulsed stimulation (tPCS)
Unmentioned: caffeine, theanine, piracetam, aniracetam, oxiracetam, methylphenidate, dihexa, creatine, choline, donepezil
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @02:14PM
Unmentioned: caffeine, theanine, piracetam, aniracetam, oxiracetam, methylphenidate , dihexa, creatine, choline, donepezil
methylphenidate is ritalin. it is a shitty imitation cocaine that is less effective, more addictive and considerably more harmful
i feel mountains of sympathy for any child who is given this crab. i was called ADD, and given this stuff. as a veteran of many street drugs including coke and methcat, i can say concerta and ritalin, two preparations of methylphenidate, are ifinitely worse than anything a nigerian ever sold me.
i've also heard of nigerians telling friends who are hitting the coke or the methcat too hard, 'hey buddy, i like the money and all, but don't you think you should cool it?'
where will you find one of those respectable pushers, a.k.a. general practitioners, advising you to cool it? no he wants you to take the shit every day, for the rest of your life! Yes it causes brain damage, serious down-regulation of dopamine production and large scale receptor damage (much more than coke, which doesn't really cause much damage) probably resulting in parkinsons and / or alzheimers, but at least the profits go to respectable men in white coats and white collars, you know, not grubby brown people from the other side of the border.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by davester666 on Wednesday October 28 2015, @05:22AM
You forgot meth and coke.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 27 2015, @10:55AM
"Enhancing" the brain sounds cool, but since when does anyone claim to understand the brain? Whatever you're doing to "enhance" any part of your brain is experimental. Hook up some electrical probes? Go for it. Knock yourself out. But, it is EXPERIMENTAL! I guess that's alright if you're a little mental to start with.
Chemistry, electricty, drugs, it matters little. Think about it - the effects of drugs like adderal still aren't completely understood. The stuff works thus and so, for most people, most of the time, but the outliers prove that the drug isn't really understood.
If you are happy being a guinea pig, find. I'll pass, thank you very much.
And, don't mind me if I plug a 110V extension cord into that socket in your head, as a joke. BZZZZT! Awesome, man - there's smoke coming out of your ears, your nose, and your mouth. Cool! There's even a wisp of smoke coming out of your eye sockets!
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Tuesday October 27 2015, @10:58AM
When do users stop being guinea pigs? Is caffeine, a drug used by a strong majority of the population, sufficiently understood?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 27 2015, @11:24AM
Caffeine? No, it's not perfectly understood. But, it DOES have a lot of empirical data regarding it's use. Enough is known about caffeine that people can make intelligent, informed decisions about it's use. Both the upsides and the downsides are modestly well understood. That goes hand in hand with a long history of use and abuse - the early testing was performed in prehistory, and more testing has been done since then.
The "enhancements" under discussion lack any body of empirical or other data. They are strictly experimental.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @03:41PM
I think if most people understood that anal leakage of stomach acid (roughly equivalent in potency to hydrochloric acid), colon cancer, irritable bowel, that sort of thing were side-effects of caffeine, they would be a little more cautious with it. Read the insert on some caffeine pills sometime. Or just download the MSDS....
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB0QFjAAahUKEwjekZfa_eLIAhWDvhQKHRiXDak&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencelab.com%2Fmsds.php%3FmsdsId%3D9927475&usg=AFQjCNEUt8wW6_FvqTAFehxN5N5y7ApDvg&sig2=jrza7AEswJbhLrx9McaHoQ [google.com]
Hazardous in case of skin contact (irritant), of eye contact (irritant), of ingestion, of inhalation.
Seriously? It just gets better after that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @05:12PM
I think there is no substance that doesn't have "Hazardous in case of skin contact (irritant), of eye contact (irritant), of ingestion, of inhalation." in MSDS. Well maybe except DHMO and those that are corrosive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @10:03PM
Ummm... with an LD50 of 192mg/KG in rats? This is an out and out poison. Alcohol, a substance many consider to be a poison and will not put in their body has an LD50 of 7060mg/KG, it is completely benign by comparison. Even bleach is safer, with an LD50 of 850mg/KG. Would you eat bleach?
Caffeine is sold virtually without warning to an unsuspecting population and the results are catastrophic. It is a dangerous drug and a poison and yet I know some people who casually feed coffee to their children instead of breakfast. People just don't know about the dangers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @11:20PM
Would I eat bleach? If 95 milligrams of it gave me all the perks of coffee, I'd sure eat 95 milligrams of it. Hell, I could go higher, since I'm diluting the 3 hundreths of an ounce of bleach in a few ounces of water at least, no problem.
Comparing something to bleach is silly. Your visual is a giant bottle of bleach. Caffeine is not coffee. There is a tiny amount of caffeine in coffee by volume- of course it is potent. You are having decigrams of it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @04:03PM
picture of the web a spider made after getting dosed with caffeine and other psychoactive drugs:
http://www.kscience.co.uk/resources/ks3/drugs/spider_experiments.htm [kscience.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday October 31 2015, @05:42AM
This just happened to be published right around when you posted your comment:
http://www.vice.com/read/have-scientists-learned-anything-from-giving-drugs-to-spiders-1029 [vice.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by umafuckitt on Tuesday October 27 2015, @04:43PM
If you want to "enhance" your brain (not that I really know what the means) then read a good book, watch a documentary, go to a museum, meet some new people, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @06:03PM
eh well it may make some less ignorant but that wont make them more smart.
(Score: 2) by unzombied on Tuesday October 27 2015, @06:20PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @06:34PM
And get enough sleep. Very many people living "modern lifestyles" don't get enough sleep.
Just because you wake up after 4-5 hours doesn't mean it's time to start your waking life. Stay calm and go back to sleep again even if it takes a while: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783 [bbc.com]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/ [nih.gov]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_sleep_deprivation_on_cognitive_performance [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday October 28 2015, @12:23AM
I don't think there will be a productive discussion on this topic.
Naysayers will say nay, and the people that use any of this will see those naysayers and will be unlikely to draw attention to themselves due to the negative stigma about being chemically enhanced. I think there is a sort of unfairness that people claim--sort of like the soylent drink product. It sometimes boils down to a I like to eat steak so you have to as well sort of thing--not because they have a valuable contribution, but because as a nay sayer they will say nay. Soylent is cheating because I like meat and god gave us canines to eat McDarwins as part of a healthy balanced diet--or some logical fallacy like that to defend the belief system.
That said, I know people that are on focus enhancing drugs -- people that do not need the drugs -- and they are better at everything they do because they can literally put down the pipe and get something done. I cannot deny the results they provide, but I actually like to work hard so I am more likely to have down time. I am not so sure I would want to use that down time to take a drug to work harder during it. Yet I know people that do this in the pursuit of money.
If anything, a drug that imparts a sense of passion and motivation would be a productive boon to society, but everything can be abused. (I do not mean blissing out or sex enhancement.)
There are people that have motivation to embark upon whatever it is they feel needs doing after giving it some serious thought (or on a lark), and those same folks are capable of seeing it through to the end--and maybe learning something new along the way...Should someone find a way to bottle that, it could be a wonder drug. If if it was safe and effective, call me a cheater.
But then, the naysayer that I am, I'll complain my competition took it during their downtime and it's not fair because I didn't take it because I wanted to relax and now they got ahead because they were willing to work and cheated by taking a pill. I'll swig soylent and try to catch up and not realize that the nootropics I took previously didn't give me any wisdom, but they did give me something to think about.
It's easy to fall into these logical fallacies sometimes...
But to other people's points -- there is no time like the present to be young, good looking, intelligent, and energetic enough to take advantage of all three. Not all of us are so blessed, so I see it as a benefit to society when something is offered to remedy some of these problems on a more than just superficial level.