Daily Archives: August 4, 2017

In my previous article on the subject of nootropics, I was writing about brain enhancing effects of some medicines and natural compounds. There is, however, a large number of nootropics that received little recognition from official science and remain rather poorly studied. There is a good reason for this too these compounds tend to be addictive or hallucinogenic. This article aims to cover what is known about the effects of these substances.

Nicotine

It is rather curious that nicotine, a well-known addictive component of tobacco smoke, was confirmed to have nootropic effect. The research into this property of nicotine was triggered by observations that ex-smokers tend to complain about the lack of concentration and general decline in various aspects of cognitive abilities. It turned out that nicotine does improve episodic and working memory, as well as attention. Nicotine doses delivered via patches had positive effects (improved performance in cognitive tests) in adults with mild cognitive disorders, as well as in healthy non-smokers.

Cannabis/marijuana and cognitive processes

People of artistic professions often claim that smoking pot helps creativity. There is scientific evidence to substantiate these claims. Cannabinoids seem to temporarily increase communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain thus creating a state of hyperconnectivity and allowing a loose flow of associations. This may explain the heightened creativity individuals experience when using marijuana. Reports of positive benefits include improved mood, lower levels of anxiety, stress, and depression, improved focus and fewer distractions, improved reaction times, more creative thoughts, greater verbal fluency, and better calculative complexity. These effects are largely dose-dependent, and taking higher amounts may lead to the opposite effects including sluggishness, lack of focus, nervousness, and impaired memory formation and recall.

However, the negative long-term effects of cannabis on brain structure and function have been demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt. In fact, cognitive decline associated with the use of cannabis is a serious medical problem, and lots of scientific research aims to gain insights into this problem and the potential approaches to reverse decline.

Grey area: Psychedelic drugs (LSD, mushrooms) in microdosing

Type psychedelics and microdosing in Google search, and you will be flooded with thousands of articles claiming that compounds like LSD and psilocybin (active component of magic mushroom) have almost miraculous effect on human cognitive abilities. It appears that many inventors, researchers and innovators use psychedelic compounds in very small doses, occasionally or regularly, to reach a state of enhanced consciousness, get into flow, and work more productively.

But here is a problem: not a single proper scientific publication supports these claims. There is a good reason for this: due to their well-known hallucinogenic properties and serious potential side effects, psychedelics like LSD are banned in most countries around the world. In fact, LSD was banned in the US and UK back in 1960s. This means that the only peer-reviewed published research that could inform on the actual measurable effects of psychedelics as a nootropic were done 50 years ago. The most commonly cited work (Harman, et. al. (1966) Psychedelic Agents in Creative Problem-Solving: A Pilot Study. Psychedelic Reports 19, 211-27.) was published in 1966. Although the findings reported in this publication are interesting, the quality of this work in terms of general organization, the use of suitable control subjects, and statistical power is hardly satisfactory.

The hallucinogenic properties of psychedelics are well documented. Microdosing of these compounds for enhancement of cognitive abilities, however, has not been investigated scientifically. This leave lots of space for imagination and conspiracy theories. There were repeated calls from the research community to lift the ban on research into psychedelics, but so far they seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

There are numerous evidences that psychedelics can be used to treat various psychiatric disorders. Some resent studies indicate that administration of psylobicin in moderate doses is not associated with any significant short-term or long-term risk. When it comes to cognitive enhancement, none of the available peer-reviewed scientific publications confirm or rule out such a phenomenon. One interesting resent publication claims that exposure to microdoses of psilocybin creates a state of hyperconnectivity in the brain. The findings from functional MRI experiments show:

that the structure of the brains functional patterns undergoes a dramatic change post-psilocybin, characterized by the appearance of many transient structures of low stability and of a small number of persistent ones that are not observed in the case of placebo. This means that the psychedelic state is associated with a less constrained and more intercommunicative mode of brain function, which is consistent with descriptions of the nature of consciousness in the psychedelic state.

In other words, the study indirectly points to the possibility of cognitive enhancement and creative stimulation under the influence of psychedelics. Nonetheless, a more definite confirmation of this phenomenon is yet to be published.

A word in defense of official science

People of a more adventurous nature tend to blame the science and medicine industry for slowness inrecognizing the benefits of smart drugs. But lets look at this problem from the perspective of researchers. Most drugs are safe, but from time to time people do experience serious side effects and even life-threatening complications. Nobody wants to be one of the unlucky few. If something goes wrong, youll have nobody but yourself to blame. Regulatory bodies can recommend any given substance for any particular use only when they have sufficient evidence thata) confirms its effectiveness andb) shows that its side effects are mild and manageable, and/or its benefits far exceed the potential complications associated with its use (i.e., the risk is worth taking).

Development of novel nootropics is hampered by research, validation, and regulatory challenges. The road from the research laboratory to FDA approval is difficult, long, and costly. Pharmacological enhancement of healthy populations is fraught with ethical and philosophical pushbacks. Therapeutic effects observed in cognitively impaired patients often contradict those in healthy populations. Even approved drugs have issues with side effects and large individual differences. The long-term effects of nootropics are typically unknown. Most importantly, there is still much to be learned about the cellular and molecular basis for the various aspects of cognition. Once they are better understood, pharmacologists will have much better ideas about the processes in the brain to target and how to do it.

It is easy to get carried away with the potential opportunities that nootropics might offer. But dont forget classical approaches: proper diet and exercise DO enhance brain functions. Many famous thinkers and creative people benefited from simple regular physical activities. Charles Dickens was spending several hours every day walking, sometimes for as much as 20 or 30 miles. Aristotle and Ludwig Van Beethoven are two other famous people who were known for their habit of wondering around while thinking. Physical activity pumps blood through your body and helps to deliver more oxygen to your brain. Regular exercise and healthy diet also keep your blood vessels healthy ensuring that this vital oxygenation is not reduced as you get older. Your normal lifestyle is responsible for your basic level of cognitive abilities. Smart drugs can be used to spike it up from time to time, but if the basic level is low, the spikes wont go that high anyway!

To sum it up, although an occasional joint may heighten your creativity, the regular use of cannabis is definitely not a good approach to enhance cognitive abilities. There is an acute lack of research on benefits (or absence of such) of psychedelics in cognitive enhancement. Virtually all online information on the benefits of psychedelics as cognitive enhancers are completely unsubstantiated by scientific evidence. Any positive or negative appraisals represent personal views of the articles authors rather than results of research studies. Your lifestyle influences you basic level of cognitive abilities dont ignore generally accepted good strategies.

References

Heishman SJ et al. (2010) Meta-analysis of the acute effects of nicotine and smoking on human performance. Psychopharmacology (2010) 210: 453. doi: 10.1007/s00213-010-1848-1

Newhouse P et al. (2012) Nicotine treatment of mild cognitive impairment: a 6-month double-blind pilot clinical trial. Neurology 78, 91-101. doi: 10.1212/WNL.0b013e31823efcbb.

Wignall ND and de Wit H (2011) Effects of nicotine on attention and inhibitory control in healthy nonsmokers. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology 19, 183-191. doi: 10.1037/a0023292

Morgan CJ et al. (2010) Hyper-priming in cannabis users: a naturalistic study of the effects of cannabis on semantic memory function. Psychiatry Res 176, 213-218. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2008.09.002.

GiovanniBattistella G et al. (2014) Long-Term Effects of Cannabis on Brain Structure. Neuropsychopharmacology 39, 20412048; doi: 10.1038/npp.2014.67

Filbey FM et al. (2014) Long-term effects of marijuana use on the brain. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 111, 1691316918. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1415297111

Studerus E et al. (2010) Acute, subacute and long-term subjective effects of psilocybin in healthy humans: a pooled analysis of experimental studies. Journal of Psychopharmacology 25, 1434 1452. doi: 10.1177/0269881110382466

Petri G et al. (2014) Homological Scaffolds of Brain Functional Networks. J R Soc Interface 11, 20140873. doi: 10.1098/rsif.2014.0873

Image via Wunderela/Pixabay.

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Nootropic Effects of Psychedelic and Addictive Substances - Brain Blogger (blog)

The desire to tweak ourselves is embedded in nearly all of us. We try to tweak our appearance with our morning grooming and dressing rituals, we try to tweak our bodies with diets and exercise, and if that is not enough there is always plastic surgery to give nature a helping hand.

Tweaking our brain, on the other hand, is harder to realize and much harder to objectively quantify. When you go to the dentist and ask for a better smile, you can explain what you want, the dentist can visualize your expectations, and you can see and judge the result. But you cant go to a neurologist and say that you would like to be 10% smarter.

The brain is a complex and energy hungry organ, it represents around 2% of our body weight but uses 20% of our energy. When we talk about pimping our brain, we have to first decide what attribute we want to pimp, why we want to pimp it and then decide how, if at all possible, to pimp it.

There is a billion dollar industry built around supplements. It ranges from nootropics, that can help a student get a study edge, or enhance a fighter jet pilots combat abilities, to herbal based products, that promise a better memory or a better blood flow in our brains.

I had mentioned Modafinil, a popular nootropic, in a previous article. Apparently it is proven to have cognitive effects, like enhancing attention and concentration. If you search the internet there are a lot of first hand experiences of the drugs subjective effect on users; there are also studies about the measurable effect the drug has on our brains, so it is safe to say that it is not just a hype, but there are far too few studies on the long term effects to label the drug as harmless.

Prof. Con Stough, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology at Swinburne University, has been studying nootropics and their effects on the human brain for quite a while. In a Reddit AMA session, the professor discusses the effects, and side effects, of different drugs that he has studied. He confirms that there are measurable, positive cognitive effects from Modafinil, but he believes the enhanced ability to solve problems, is more a subjective feeling than an objective observation.

Interestingly he also admits to taking vitamin B6, B12 and antioxidants, Pycnogenol, as supplements. Insisting that he has not done any studies, only reviews, he is also convinced of the positive effects Bacopa and Ginseng, two popular plant-based supplements, have on our brains.

We have all heard it somewhere- The brain is like a muscle and can be trained.

A lot of us have been brought up believing that we are born with a limited number of brain cells, and with time, alcohol and stress, they will irreversibly die away, making us dumber by the day. That is not true, we constantly grow new brain cells, like all other cells, and taking your brain for a jog is not really a joke. Studies show that new muscles make new proteins that also stimulate the brain to grow.

Learning new motor skills, like juggling, or behavioral/ environmental changes, are known to encourage synaptogenesis. Adults with an increased number of synapses have a better cognitive functionality, and are less likely to suffer from neurodegeneration, compared to their peers with a lower synapses density.

What apparently does not help, is the sea of apps and computer programs that promise to improve your brain, in some way or the other, through regular training. One study

has shown that after six weeks training with diverse computer programs, there were measurable improvement in a number of benchmarking tests participants took before and after the training period, but it did not translate into an improvement of tasks that were not trained, even if they were cognitively similar. So you get better in what you are training but it doesnt mean that your brain will generally function better.

There are lots of methods to enhance your brain, some a little extreme and not yet recommendable, like implanting electrodes in your head and electrocuting your brain; and others more subtle, like association methods to help you remember things better. The question is: how much of what do you really need, and how do you measure intelligence? Is a bigot with a PhD. more intelligent, or a compassionate social worker with a high school diploma?

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Pimp my Brain: The Quest for Intelligence - TG Daily (blog)

Anecdotal evidence suggests more people working in financial services are using smart drugs with the aim of boosting their professional performance. Real data is needed to understand this trend.

To that end, the Brain, Mind and Markets Laboratory at the University of Melbourne is conducting the first-ever survey of the use of smart drugs in the Australian financial services industry. The confidential and anonymous survey takes between 5 and 10 minutes to complete online.

The research is being jointly led by Dr Carsten Murawski, Professor Peter Bossaerts and me. Murawski and Bossaerts established the Brain, Mind and Markets Laboratory in 2016 to bring together a multidisciplinary team to study financial decision-making and market behaviour.

Unique in the world, the lab brings together research in finance and economics, neuroscience and computer science to better understand not just what influences individuals to make decisions, but also how markets process information and how humans and computer algorithms influence each other in decision-making environments.

Smart drugs or nootropics refer to medications or substances used to try to improve cognitive functions. People taking them might be aiming to increase mental alertness and concentration, fight fatigue, focus attention, reduce anxiety and stress, or generally boost energy levels and wakefulness. The drugs the lab is interested in might be prescription-only medications such as Ritalin or Provigil, over-the-counter substances, such as caffeine and nicotine, or illicit drugs such as cocaine and amphetamines.

While there has been some scientific research performed in controlled conditions on how these substances influence basic cognitive tasks, these studies often show quite mixed results in terms of effects on cognition. Of further concern is that many professional industries (such as medicine and finance) require far more creative and multidimensional approaches to what are often computationally complex and intractable problems. It is still unknown if these drugs can help or hinder this kind of problem-solving.

There have been studies, both in Australia and internationally, that have surveyed the use of these drugs in populations such as university students, medical students and surgeons. However there has not yet been an investigation of their use in the highly competitive and diverse world of finance.

Our survey aims to develop a picture of how these kinds of drugs are used in different sectors of the financial industry and perceptions of their positive and negative effects. We ask what people might know about the use of smart drugs in their working environment and what kinds of effects they are thought to have. Different sectors of the financial industry require very different skill sets and approaches to problem solving, so it would be interesting to see if different drugs are more or less frequently seen in these different sectors.

As modern professional workplaces strive to increase their intensity and productivity and the popular profile of these drugs as treatments for conditions like ADHD increases, its not surprising that there is more interest in their use by healthy people. And, of course, their use raises many ethical questions on issues like competition, perceptions of fairness and of personal choice. However, these issues cannot begin to be addressed without scientific evidence of their use and effects in the workplace. This survey is one of the first steps in acquiring this evidence.

We would like to invite Investment Magazine readers to take part in this research by completing the confidential online survey. The survey has been approved by the University of Melbourne Human Research Ethics Committee, takes only 5 to 10 minutes to complete and all responses are completely anonymous.

Dr Elizabeth Bowman is a postdoctoral fellow in decision neuroscience in the Brain, Minds and Markets Laboratory in the faculty of business and economics at the University of Melbourne. Her current research looks at how humans make decisions in conditions of risk and uncertainty.

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New study into 'smart drugs' in the finance industry - Investment Magazine