Cognitive enhancement effects of stimulants: a randomized controlled trial testing methylphenidate, modafinil, and caffe
- PDF / 413,957 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 36 Downloads / 181 Views
ORIGINAL INVESTIGATION
Cognitive enhancement effects of stimulants: a randomized controlled trial testing methylphenidate, modafinil, and caffeine Dimitris Repantis 1,2
&
Leonore Bovy 3 & Kathrin Ohla 4 & Simone Kühn 2,5 & Martin Dresler 3
Received: 20 May 2020 / Accepted: 23 October 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Rational At all times humans have made attempts to improve their cognitive abilities by different means, among others, with the use of stimulants. Widely available stimulants such as caffeine, but also prescription substances such as methylphenidate and modafinil, are being used by healthy individuals to enhance cognitive performance. Objectives There is a lack of knowledge on the effects of prescription stimulants when taken by healthy individuals (as compared with patients) and especially on the effects of different substances across different cognitive domains. Methods We conducted a pilot study with three arms in which male participants received placebo and one of three stimulants (caffeine, methylphenidate, modafinil) and assessed cognitive performance with a test battery that captures various cognitive domains. Results Our study showed some moderate effects of the three stimulants tested. Methylphenidate had positive effects on selfreported fatigue as well as on declarative memory 24 hours after learning; caffeine had a positive effect on sustained attention; there was no significant effect of modafinil in any of the instruments of our test battery. All stimulants were well tolerated, and no trade-off negative effects on other cognitive domains were found. Conclusions The few observed significant positive effects of the tested stimulants were domain-specific and of rather low magnitude. The results can inform the use of stimulants for cognitive enhancement purposes as well as direct further research to investigate the effects of stimulants on specific cognitive domains that seem most promising, possibly by using tasks that are more demanding. Keywords Neuroenhancement . Cognitive enhancement . Methylphenidate . Modafinil . Caffeine
Introduction
* Dimitris Repantis [email protected] 1
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Hindenburgdamm 30, 12203 Berlin, Germany
2
Lise Meitner Group for Environmental Neuroscience, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
3
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
4
Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-3), Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, Germany
5
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), Hamburg, Germany
At all times, humans have made attempts to improve their cognitive abilities (Dresler et al. 2018). Several means of enhancing cognition are every day practice, such as the use of caffeine in the form of caff
Data Loading...
