Intuitively, it would seem logical that drugs that improve atten

Intuitively, it would seem logical that drugs that improve attention and concentration should also promote learning and academic achievement. Inherent in terms like “cognitive enhancers,” “smart drugs,” and “neuroenhancers” is the assumption that MPH and d-AMP enhance cognition. Major magazines such as The New Yorker have reported a trend toward growing use of mean prescription stimulants by college students for “neuroenhancement”. In fact, some students

are faking ADHD to gain access to prescription stimulant medication, which has led to a shortage of ADHD drugs such as Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Adderall (Mitchell 2012). Unfortunately, media reports appear to condone this behavior as 95% of articles mentioned at least one possible benefit Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of using prescription drugs for neuroenhancement, but only 58% mentioned any risks or side effects (Partridge

et al. 2011). Duke University recently enacted a new policy prohibiting the nonmedical use of prescription stimulants for any academic purposes (McLaughlin 2012). Students received an email stating policy changes including, “The unauthorized use of prescription medication to enhance academic performance has been added to the definition of Cheating.” In the past, the use of such drugs without a prescription was only a violation under the University’s drug policy. Oddly, the assumption that prescription stimulants are truly “cognitive enhancers” Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical is not really questioned. Stimulants reduce hyperactivity, impulsivity, and inattention in children and adults with ADHD, so it has been assumed that these drugs enhance long-term intellectual performance. However, contrary to simple implicit assumptions found in bioethics and media discourses, there are actually Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical only a few studies on the enhancement effects of “cognitive enhancers” in individuals without ADHD. Smith and Farah (2011) reviewed data on prescription stimulants as Nutlin-3a mw neuroenhancers from over forty laboratory studies involving healthy, nonelderly

adults. Most of the Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical studies looked at one of three types of cognition: learning, working memory, and cognitive control. Effects of d-AMP or MPH on cognition were assessed by a variety of tasks (Table 1). A typical learning task asks subjects to memorize a list of paired words; an hour, a few days, or a week later, subjects are presented with the first words in the pairs and asked to come up with the second. In general, with AV-951 single exposures of verbal material, the studies on learning showed that no benefits are seen immediately following learning, but later recall and recognition are enhanced. Of the six articles reporting on memory performance (Rapoport et al. 1978; Soetens et al. 1993; Camp-Bruno and Herting 1994; Fleming et al. 1995; Unrug et al. 1997; Zeeuws and Soetens 2007), encompassing eight separate experiments, only one of the experiments yielded significant memory enhancement on short delays (Rapoport et al. 1978).

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