Supercharging the brain looks at cognitive enhancers:
For an indication of what might happen if a safe and effective cognitive enhancer were to reach the market, consider the example of modafinil. Manufactured by Cephalon, a biotech company based in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and sold under the names Provigil and Alertec, the drug is a stimulant that vastly improves alertness in patients with narcolepsy, shift-work sleep disorder and sleep apnea. Since it first reached the market in America in 1999, sales have shot through the roof, reaching $290m in 2003 and expected to grow by at least 30% this year.Much of the sales growth of modafinil has been driven by its off-label use, which accounts for as much as 90% of consumption. With its amazing safety profile — the side-effects generally do not go beyond mild headache or nausea — the drug is increasingly used to alleviate sleepiness resulting from all sorts of causes, including depression, jet lag or simply working long hours with too little sleep.
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Modafinil has already surfaced in doping scandals. Kelli White, an American sprinter who took first place in the 100-metre and 200-metre competitions at last year’s World Championships in Paris, later tested positive for the drug. Initially she insisted that it had been prescribed to treat narcolepsy, but subsequently admitted to using other banned substances as well. As a result, she was forced to return the medals she won last year and, along with a handful of other American athletes, was barred from competitions for two years.
Brain-boosting drugs are hardly new though; in fact, they can be so commonplace we don’t even think of them as brain-boosting drugs:
“It’s human nature to find things to improve ourselves,” he says. Indeed, for thousands of years, people have chewed, brewed or smoked substances in the hopes of boosting their mental abilities as well as their stamina. Since coffee first became popular in the Arab world during the 16th century, the drink has become a widely and cheaply available cognitive enhancer. The average American coffee drinker sips more than three cups a day (and may also consume caffeine-laced soft drinks).
How do Provigil, amphetamines, and caffeine stack up?
Last year, Nancy Jo Wesensten, a research psychologist at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, compared the effects of three popular alertness drugs — modafinil, dextroamphetamine and caffeine — head to head, using equally potent doses. Forty-eight subjects received one of the drugs, or a placebo, after being awake for 65 hours. The researchers then administered a battery of tests. All of the drugs did a good job restoring wakefulness for six to eight hours. After that, says Dr Wesensten, the performance of the subjects on caffeine declined because of its short half-life (a fact that could be easily remedied by consuming another dose, she points out). The other two groups reached their operational limit after 20 hours — staying awake for a total of 85 hours.When the researchers looked at the drugs’ effects on higher cognitive functions, such as planning and decision-making, they found each drug showed strengths and weaknesses in different areas. Caffeine was particularly effective in boosting a person’s ability to estimate unknown quantities. When asked 20 questions that required a specific numeric answer — such as “how high off a trampoline can a person jump?” — 92% of volunteers on caffeine and 75% on modafinil showed good estimation skills. But only 42% on dextroamphetamine did so — the same proportion as the sleep-deprived subjects who had received a placebo.