Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
  
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RE: virus: This pill will make you smarter
« on: 2005-06-05 04:33:24 » |
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[Blunderov] For obvious reasons the idea of cognitive enhancement is
attractive to me. I try to remind myself though, that it is prudent to
be careful of what you wish for. An enhanced memory may, for instance,
be more retentive than is really convenient; in order to form a coherent
narrative of the self, it is sometimes necessary to forget stuff. To
take a step back from the edge of the abyss.
Taken to extremes, imagine what it would be like to 'remember' pain?
Brain chemistry is not lightly fucked with. Of course it can be a lot of
fun, but it is necessary to reckon with the possibility (certainty
even?) that it may have permanent effects.
Tempting though...
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624994.700
HAVING problems performing in the sack? Take Viagra. Got the jitters
before that important presentation? Try beta blockers. Need to stay
awake to finish that assignment? Pop a Provigil pill.
For those prepared to pay, the growing list of "lifestyle drugs" is
shifting the boundaries of what bodies and minds are capable of. Now a
small clinical trial of the class of experimental drugs known as
ampakines suggests these brain-boosters are destined to blur that line
still further by offering improved memory.
The success of the unrelated drug Provigil (also called modafinil) has
proved there is a huge market for drugs that can improve mental
performance. The US Food and Drug Administration has approved it for
treating narcolepsy, sleep apnoea - disrupted breathing during sleep -
and the sleepiness caused by shift work. But it is widely taken
"off-label" by healthy people to stay awake and alert. Sales of the
drug, produced by Cephalon of West Chester, Philadelphia, have more than
doubled since 2002, and continue to skyrocket (see Graphic).
Some may feel uncomfortable with the increasing availability of such
pharmaceutical pick-me-ups, but others see them as no different from
performance aids such as palmtop organisers. "Stimulating your brain
with a reminder on a Blackberry doesn't seem that different to me from
stimulating your brain with a drug," says Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist
at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Ampakines work by boosting the activity of glutamate, a key
neurotransmitter that makes it easier to learn and encode memory. They
change the rules about what it takes to create a memory, and how strong
those memories can be, says Gary Lynch of the University of California
at Irvine, who invented the drugs. "We all have the same computer," he
says, "but we're running with different voltage levels." Ampakines up
that "voltage".
The effects can be dramatic, as Julia Boyle at the University of Surrey,
UK, and her colleagues have now shown. They tested an ampakine called
CX717 on 16 healthy males aged between 18 and 45. The men were given
either 100 milligrams, 300 mg or 1000 mg of the drug, or else a placebo.
In repeated trials the volunteers cycled through the treatments so that
their performance with different amounts of CX717 could be compared
directly.
In each test session, the volunteers started with a full night's sleep
and the following morning and evening were given a battery of tests.
These assessed memory, attention, alertness, reaction time and problem
solving. Then, at 11 pm, the volunteers swallowed their pills and stayed
up through the night. At midnight, 1 am, 3 am, 5 am and 9 am, they were
re-tested on some of the tasks. And at 4 am, cruelly, they were tucked
into bed in a darkened room and told to stay awake. The researchers
measured heart rate and brainwave activity to monitor how alert the
subjects were and whether they fell asleep.
"Even the lowest dose of CX717 improved the wakefulness and cognitive
performance of sleep-deprived people"Even the lowest dose of CX717
significantly improved the sleep-deprived volunteers' wakefulness and
cognitive performance. And the more ampakine they took, the more they
improved and the longer the effect lasted. Roger Stoll, CEO of Cortex,
the Irvine-based company in California that owns the drug, announced the
trial results at an investors' conference on 4 May. While specifics were
scant, he mentioned that in the dark room, for instance, most volunteers
taking placebo dozed off within about 3 minutes, while some ampakine
users stayed awake for the entire 15-minute test. And on a test of
sustained attention, effects kicked in within an hour of consuming the
drug, he revealed. Crucially, the subjects suffered none of the
jitteriness that comes with caffeine or amphetamines. "It generates a
state of cortical wakefulness without stimulation," says Lynch.
CX717 will have to undergo further clinical trials before gaining
approval as a drug. Cortex is considering it as a possible treatment for
narcolepsy, jet lag, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and
Alzheimer's disease.
Meanwhile animal studies hint at even more impressive effects. Research
on rhesus macaques, carried out for the US military by Sam Deadwyler at
Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North
Carolina, found that sleep-deprived monkeys on CX717 actually performed
better on reaction time and accuracy tests than when they were well
rested. And non-sleep-deprived monkeys given the drug did better still.
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