Release date: 2016-08-01
This is an open secret: athletes stimulants, ordinary office workers, smart drugs (also known as nootropics, or smart drugs). They buy Ritalin or Provigil prescription drugs from the online booming black market to improve their cognitive performance.
It is difficult for scientists to obtain reliable data on how many people take these “smart drugs†or “pharmacologically cognitively enhanced substancesâ€. However, prevalence studies and surveys suggest that people from all walks of life use them, such as researchers, surgeons, and students. In an informal vote initiated by Nature journal readers, 20% claimed they had taken smart drugs. There are signs that their use is still increasing.
Therefore, if you are in a more competitive position with higher requirements, then some of your colleagues may have taken smart drugs. Does this idea make you worry? If this is the case, then you will take it. Some studies have consistently found that people negatively view drugs that increase brain intelligence.
A major concern is fairness. Imagine that while you are improving your mental energy through running, your colleagues are taking Ritalin. When you think your nap can refocus, your office colleagues rely on Modafini to do this. Is it unfair? The general public believes that taking smart drugs is a deception because it gives users a competitive advantage. In fact, even some scholars claim that taking drugs that improve brain intelligence is unfair to those who don't use them.
Mixed effect
So, if your colleague’s performance report is better than you, is it really because she is taking Ritalin? If your office colleagues come up with more creative ideas, is it taking modafinil? It’s possible Not like this. These smart drugs are currently available to improve brain performance, but they are not as effective as the dazzling media reports often suggest. In fact, research shows that although they can help some people perform better, they do allow others to behave worse than they normally would. Let's take a look at two well-known smart drugs: methylphenidate (trade name: Ritalin) and modafinil (brand name Provigil), and their effects.
Ritalin is a psychostimulant that increases the concentration of the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain. Ritalin is usually prescribed in patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Indeed, this drug can have a positive impact on memory performance. However, to date, it has been unclear whether Ritalin can help improve other important aspects of cognitive performance such as attention and learning. It is important that people who do not perform well under normal conditions benefit more from the use of this drug than those who perform well. Ritalin can even reduce the brainpower of those who perform well, such as by weakening their short-term memory.
Modafinil is a wake-up medicine. Although its effects on the brain are not fully understood, it is partly due to increased dopamine concentration. Taking modafinil does improve attention, but it is still unclear whether it also produces any other cognitive benefit. If this is the case, these benefits may be smaller.
But Modafinil may also make you less clever: it reduces the creativity and flexibility of thinking. Moreover, similar to Ritalin, Modafinil is able to increase the brain power of people who perform poorly under normal conditions. In other words, if you take modafinil, you may perform better in one area, but will lower your performance in another. Moreover, if you are a good performer, you can hardly benefit from it.
This is because smart drugs affect the concentration of neurotransmitters in the brain. At the best concentration, performance is the best, while too low and too high levels can lead to poor performance. If you are a poor performer, taking a smart drug can increase your brain's level of a certain level of neurotransmitter that is likely to benefit you. If you are a good performer, then you are likely to be close to an optimal neurotransmitter concentration, and further increasing its concentration will not improve your performance. Instead, it will cause you to perform worse. There is an upper limit to taking a drug that increases brain intelligence to increase the cognitive performance of the user. This is also true for those who perform poorly: taking too many smart drugs, you will increase your neurotransmitter levels above the optimal level, and the result is to reduce your cleverness.
What kind of enlightenment does this bring us?
Going for a run or a nap instead of taking a smart drug may be a better idea. Studies have confirmed that physical exercise improves memory and learning, especially if it is done regularly. Similarly, sleep can improve your brain, even if you are not so tired. It has a particularly large positive effect on memory and can also increase creativity. During the day, even as little as 6 minutes, you can improve your memory.
So far, no studies have directly compared these non-pharmacological approaches to improving cognitive performance with smart drugs, but it seems that smart drugs are not as effective.
Some people may claim that smart drugs are no big deal based on this, and we should no longer think it is unfair to take them. I think things are not that simple. People still tend to overestimate the effects of smart drugs, which may lead them to order these drugs from unregulated black markets on the Internet, even if they have potential long-term side effects. The truth is that so far we really don't know if there are such side effects.
In addition, overestimation of the effectiveness of smart drugs can be blamed by the user and lead to tensions between the user and the non-user, especially when they work together in the group. As scientists, our mission is to help people accurately understand the effects of smart drugs and the effects they cannot.
Source: Bio Valley
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