[quote name='Ghostrider']I think that depends on who you talk to. Not everyone has had a good experience with modafinil or methylphenidate. If your experience with Modafinil was absolutely horrible, as in it did nothing good for you and temporarily destroyed your sleep pattern, would you still advocate it based on other people's positive experiences and pubmed articles? Modafinil has been on the market since 1999. I had not heard about it until a few months ago. From college, I had heard of students using caffeine methylphenidate, and adderall to improve cognitive performance, but never Modafinil. I am beginning to feel that the best test for these cognitive enhancers is 1) How mainstream are they? or 2) What do the experts use: people who really know about neurochemistry and the sciences of the mind -- what do they use to increase their cognitive abilities and health or maybe even 3) What do the people who really need cognitive performance use: doctors, science/engineering students in competitive programs? The options that 3 and maybe 1 choose might not be so healthy...
I think Pubmed and other surveys are a good place to start, but these studies that I have read only give statistics. They tell that some aspect of cognition was improved, but they don't convey anything about the experience. I guess a similar analogy would be when an auto-enthusiast goes out to buy a performance automobile. No such person would just blindly go off the numbers on paper published by the manufacturer or another source. They want to actually drive the car before making a purchase decision. They want to feel how the car handles, feel how flat the torque curve is, feel the brakes, etc. I think the same thing can be said of many popular cognitive enhancers today. Some people claim that caffeine stifles creativity -- leading to more impulsive behavior -- or modafinil stifles depth of thinking -- for the ability to process simpler thoughts faster.
I guess what I would like to see more of in this forum is some discussion about how cognitive ability can be improved -- theories, speculation. Similar to what is going on in the SENS / Anti-aging section. Over there, people are talking about how to engineer senescence. I think such discussion would benefit this forum, however, I will need at least a few months to get up to speed on topics related to the science of the mind...because now I am starting from a blank slate.[/quote]
For healthy volunteers, modafinil seems to work the best out of any compound known to medicine that has demonstrated the capacity to enhance cognition -- as far as side effects go, it has the least of ANY compound of all such classified substances. The quoted abstract pasted below used 60 healthy volunteers.
[quote]Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2003 Jan;165(3):260-9. Epub 2002 Nov 1.
Cognitive enhancing effects of modafinil in healthy volunteers.
* Turner DC,
* Robbins TW,
* Clark L,
* Aron AR,
* Dowson J,
* Sahakian BJ.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, School of Clinical Medicine, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 2QQ, UK.
RATIONALE: Modafinil, a novel wake-promoting agent, has been shown to have a similar clinical profile to that of conventional stimulants such as methylphenidate. We were therefore interested in assessing whether modafinil, with its unique pharmacological mode of action, might offer similar potential as a cognitive enhancer, without the side effects commonly experienced with amphetamine-like drugs. OBJECTIVES: The main aim of this study was to evaluate the cognitive enhancing potential of this novel agent using a comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests.
METHODS: Sixty healthy young adult male volunteers received either a single oral dose of placebo, or 100 mg or 200 mg modafinil prior to performing a variety of tasks designed to test memory and attention. A randomised double-blind, between-subjects design was used. RESULTS: Modafinil significantly enhanced performance on tests of digit span, visual pattern recognition memory, spatial planning and stop-signal reaction time. These performance improvements were complemented by a slowing in latency on three tests: delayed matching to sample, a decision-making task and the spatial planning task. Subjects reported feeling more alert, attentive and energetic on drug. The effects were not clearly dose dependent, except for those seen with the stop-signal paradigm. In contrast to previous findings with methylphenidate, there were no significant effects of drug on spatial memory span, spatial working memory, rapid visual information processing or attentional set-shifting. Additionally, no effects on paired associates learning were identified. CONCLUSIONS: These data indicate that modafinil selectively improves neuropsychological task performance. This improvement may be attributable to an enhanced ability to inhibit pre-potent responses. This effect appears to reduce impulsive responding, suggesting that modafinil may be of benefit in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
PMID: 12417966 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE][/quote]
I have access to the full text (if you want to see the full paper, you need to pay):
http://www.springerl...vm/fulltext.pdfhttp://www.springerl...8dmqb55x0ca7vm/I've taken a part of a paragraph out of the introduction:
[quote name='http://www.springerlink.com/content/ab8dmqb55x0ca7vm/fulltext.pdf']
Traditional stimulants have been shown to be effective in
maintaining and enhancing performance on tests of
attention and working memory (Solanto 1998), although
often with significant side effects and the risk of
dependence (Kollins et al. 2001). In contrast, modafinil
has been shown to be safe and effective in the management
of narcolepsy, with significantly fewer side effects
being observed in patients on modafinil relative to
placebo (Billiard et al. 1994) and with little evidence of
dependence (Jasinski 2000). Animal research suggests
that, unlike amphetamine and methylphenidate, the psychomotor
effects of modafinil are not mediated via a
catecholamine mechanism (Ferraro et al. 1996), despite
having a similar clinical profile to these drugs (Ferraro et
al. 1997). Given the proven clinical efficacy of modafinil
in ameliorating symptoms of narcolepsy and excessive
daytime sleepiness (Broughton et al. 1997), the present
study aims to evaluate the nootropic potential of this
novel agent in healthy young volunteers.[/quote]
The researcher that published this groundbreaking study on modafinil in healthy subjects is Dr. Danielle Turner et al. (from Cambridge University -- considered to be among the top 3 finest academic/learning/research institutions in the world) -- you can hear her discuss the finer differences between modafinil and ritalin (she [and/or her research group] have studied BOTH compounds in healthy humans) in the webcast (thank Opales for finding this!) pasted below: she is the second speaker (you would need to "fast forward" about 20 minutes to see her presentation; however, I would also strongly advise you to watch Nick Boström's presentation as well).
Nick Boström on cognitive enhancement, webcast presentation at the Oxford conf.
http://streaming.oii...6/16032006-1.rm
Edited by nootropikamil, 23 August 2006 - 09:36 PM.
