Taking smart drugs to get ahead is increasingly common on college campuses. Modafinil, the drug that is prescribed to treat sleep disorders but used off-label by students to boost their cognitive abilities, has been shown to improve learning and memory and enhance something called fluid intelligence. It also doesn’t have the addictive highs and lows of other stimulants.
Increases Attention
Modafinil is a highly effective alertness-enhancing drug, with a better side effect profile than amphetamines and other psych stimulants. It enhances cognitive performance in healthy individuals and psychiatric patients with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, as well as improving prefrontal-dependent cognitive functions in schizophrenia and major depression.
The effect of Buy Modafinil Australia on cognitive function is mediated by its energizing effects on ascending dopamine systems. Specifically, it improves the ability to shift attention from one task to another. It also improves performance on a variety of attention tasks, such as digit span and the SSRT. It has also been shown to improve performance on visual discrimination learning and spatial planning tasks in rats.
Moreover, it has been shown to increase response inhibition in schizophrenic patients. This improvement is mediated by modulation of cortical GABA release in the prefrontal cortex, as well as by a reduction in pre-synaptic dopamine levels (Swanson JM et al., 2001).
Several studies of psychiatric patients have demonstrated that modafinil improves both cognitive and motor performance. For example, a double-blind placebo-controlled study of adults with obstructive sleep apnea found that modafinil significantly reduced symptoms of residual excessive daytime sleepiness. In addition, modafinil improved performance on several cognitive tests, including the CPT, digit span, and delayed matching, without affecting speed-accuracy trade-off or perceptual, arithmetic, or reasoning ability.
Increases Memory
It is an open secret that many people use drugs to boost their mental performance. These smart drugs, or cognitive enhancers, are popular among researchers, surgeons, and students. They help them stay focused, alert, and productive. However, it has been difficult to find solid scientific evidence for these claims until recently.
In a series of studies, scientists have shown that Modafinil can improve cognitive function and work rate and even improve motivation and performance in healthy people. This new finding lends credence to the anecdotal evidence from lifestyle users and provides a basis for ethical discussion of this drug’s use in clinical and shift-work settings.
Modafinil is primarily used to treat narcolepsy, but it is also widely used as an off-label cognitive enhancer to promote heightened alertness and attention in healthy people. It has been found to have powerful effects on sleep-deprived subjects, but the current results show that it has cognitive-enhancing properties that are independent of its effect on arousal.
In a double-blind study, participants were given either Modalert Tablets or placebo and performed a demanding neuropsychological task called the Hayling Sentence Completion Test. This task required them to respond both quickly and accurately. Those on Modafinil showed significantly decreased reaction times and increased accuracy compared to those on placebo. A similar result was observed in another experiment using the 10-box task. This shows that modafinil increases spatial working memory and decreases between-search errors.
Increases Creativity
Modafinil boosts your decision-making and creativity, according to a study conducted on healthy volunteers. However, it may reduce your ability to think divergently. The study found that people on Modafinil had lower scores on the ATTA, a test that measures creativity in humans. The participants in the study were given either 200 mg of Modafinil or a placebo. They completed a variety of non-verbal tests to measure their creativity and were also given a battery of tasks that measured motivation.
The researchers found that the drug increased spatial working memory, planning, and decision-making in a time-limited task, but it did not improve paired associates memory. Subjective ratings of enjoyment of task performance were also enhanced under Modafinil, but it did not affect mood overall.
On the ATTA, which measures creative problem-solving, people on the drug had lower scores. The authors speculate that this is because of a reduction in flexibility and elaboration. They also found that the drug reduced the learning of reinforcement contingencies, which can boost a person’s creativity and motivation to complete tasks. This is consistent with findings from positron emission tomography studies of the brain in rhesus monkeys and human participants.
The results from the study need to be interpreted with caution because of the small number of participants. The randomization process was successful, and the groups were well-matched for age, years of education, and verbal IQ as indexed by NART. However, the results could have been affected by creative baseline differences or by the effects of other drugs used to enhance creativity. These other drugs are called nootropics and include peroxide, creatine, and phosphatidylserine.
Increases Decision-Making
Aside from its obvious waking effects, Modafinil ( Modawake 200 ) also enhances cognition, as demonstrated by multiple studies. For example, in a double-blind trial of patients with narcolepsy, Modafinil significantly enhanced performance on a variety of cognitive tasks (Cohen’s d was 0.3 or greater on a few measures and 0.1 or less on the letter-number span test).
Modafinil also enhances pupillary responses and augments the speed of reaction to stimulus in a manner consistent with LC/NE system effects on cognition (Brennan and Cohen, 1987; Blandine et al, 2004; Richer and Beatty, 1982a, 1982b).
In a study of 31 patients with major depression, Modafinil improved performance on the WCST, a prefrontal-dependent measure of executive functioning, and reduced errors on the Stroop interference task compared to placebo, suggesting that it can reduce depressive symptoms as well as sleepiness.
It also improves several other cognitive tasks in healthy subjects, such as memory and attention (Cohen’s d was 0.5 or greater on a few tests and 0.1 or less on the letter-number-span test), and enhances verbal fluency and speed of response in a cross-over study with the b-blocker propranolol.
Anecdotally, many students, examinees for new jobs, and athletes use Modafinil to improve their ability to learn and concentrate over long periods. Unlike some research chemicals, which have been linked to psychological side effects, Modafinil seems to be a relatively safe drug for most people to try in small doses and when taken with other substances such as caffeine, which has been shown to enhance the effects of Modafinil.