Unlike prescription stimulants like Adderall, modafinil doesn’t seem to increase the risk of heart problems or addiction. But more research is needed before doctors start prescribing it to healthy people.
Oxford researchers Ruairidh Battleday and Anna-Katherine Brem analyzed 24 studies that examined how modafinil affects cognition in healthy people. They found that the drug does boost performance in basic cognitive tasks.
Effects on Attention
Although modafinil was originally developed to treat narcolepsy, it has also been shown to improve cognitive function in healthy people. This is a potentially exciting finding because it could be used to help people concentrate better during studying and other activities that require mental effort. However, researchers are still not sure exactly how the drug works or what its long-term effects might be.
Buy Modafinil Online appears to affect higher cognitive functions, such as executive control and attention, in particular when the task is difficult or requires a trade-off between speed and accuracy.
One study in which participants were asked to perform a task that required switching between different contexts found that those on modafinil made fewer errors than the placebo group. This suggests that the drug helps with attentional set-shifting, a process mediated by fronto-cortical loops that depend on ascending DA systems.
Another study using a version of the WCST that could be performed by animals found that modafinil improved performance on this and another test of episodic memory. The researchers speculate that the improvement in episodic memory is due to increased glutamate activation of hippocampal areas.
Although several clinical trials of modafinil have been conducted in children with ADHD, the studies lasted only a few months, making it impossible to determine how the drug would affect people on longer-term use. Moreover, some cognitive enhancers are known to cause side effects, such as insomnia, headache, and stomachache, in select users, and there are concerns that some may become addictive.
Effects on Memory
Modafinil can improve performance on memory-related tasks in several ways, including improving accuracy (e.g., digit span and delayed visual recognition) and inhibiting pre-potent responding. Moreover, one study found that in addition to its effects on WCST errors, modafinil also improved Stroop interference, a task typically associated with prefrontal function, suggesting that it may have cognitive enhancing actions beyond just attention and learning.
However, most of the studies that have found cognitive-enhancing effects on modafinil have been performed using basic tests that assess just a sub-component of cognition or are unchallenging for healthy participants. More complex tests are a better way to look at a drug’s effect on cognition, says Brem, who is also a neuropsychologist.
In a few of these more sophisticated studies, modafinil was found to improve working memory in a digit span and delayed matching tasks, but not RT or arithmetic performance. Interestingly, this is consistent with a recent fMRI study of narcolepsy patients in which the presence of a sleep disorder was found to predict greater activation for modafinil in frontostriatal circuitry compared to controls on a spatial working memory task (Owen et al., 1990).
Nevertheless, researchers are still trying to figure out the exact mechanisms by which modafinil enhances cognition and how it compares with other brain-boosting drugs. Until we have these answers, though, there is no reason for doctors to start prescribing this drug to healthy people.
Effects on Problem-Solving
For many people, it can be difficult to get through a day without feeling fatigued. Luckily, there are lots of substances out there that can help improve cognitive functions and give people more energy to think. However, these substances tend to come with serious side effects that can be very unpleasant. Fortunately, a recent study published in European Neuropsychopharmacology found that Waklert 150 improves cognition without causing major negative side effects.
The researchers at Oxford University reviewed 24 studies to see how modafinil affects healthy non-sleep-deprived individuals’ brains. They found that it has several positive effects, especially on complex tests that measure various aspects of cognitive functioning, like attention, learning, and memory. It also helps with problem-solving, which is the ability to take in information and use it to develop plans or strategies.
One of the most interesting findings was that modafinil improved performance on a task that measures the inhibition of prepotent responses in narcolepsy patients. This is likely due to the modulation of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex by modafinil.
Another study involving medication-free narcolepsy patients who were titrated to 400 mg/day over 3 weeks of modafinil or placebo showed significant improvement in the Pauli test and in changes of left BA 46 activity (which correlates with the coefficient of variation in inter response intervals).
Overall, the studies suggest that modafinil improves cognitive function in a wide range of conditions. Its primary action seems to be on catecholaminergic systems, which are in general advantageous for cognition.
Effects on Learning
Modafinil has been shown to improve cognitive function in several different tasks, including those that assess learning and memory. However, it’s important to note that these tests only examine one sub-component of cognition and are relatively simple. Complex cognitive tasks, which involve the integration of multiple components of memory and attention, have been more consistent in their improvement with modafinil treatment.
The researchers used a placebo-controlled, cross-over design to study the effects of modafinil on healthy volunteers performing various memory and cognitive tasks. Participants were given a single dose of modafinil or a lactose placebo before performing the tasks. The researchers found that the drug improved performance on tests that assessed spatial working memory (the Tower of London task) and episodic memory (the delayed visual recognition test, Owen et al., 1990).
On the task of associative learning, the drug also facilitated performance and increased brain activation in the ACC and dopamine-rich striatal areas. These are important neural circuitry areas supporting associative learning and memory. However, on the task of motivational reinforcement learning, the drug had the opposite effect and reduced performance.
This could be because the stimulant increases arousal and can reduce motivation, but it may also reflect the fact that modafinil is less effective in this type of associative learning than in other forms of memory and cognitive enhancement.
